For years, no one has flown higher in China than Jack Ma, the founder of the $ 500 billion e-commerce conglomerate Alibaba, the Amazon of Asia.
Now he has disappeared and no one knows where he is.
Ma, a member of the Communist Party, who famously started as an English teacher, symbolized the high-tech ‘China Dream’ until he thwarted the political leaders who once made him lions. He has not been seen in public for two months.
“China has used Jack Ma and Alibaba as well as some of the other big fintech companies to show the world what great leaders they were,” Craig Singleton, an expert on China at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, told The Post said.
‘But these companies in the private sector operate without government control, and Jack gets a little too far ahead of his skis. You only have to step out of line once, then they get you. He was probably beaten pretty hard. ‘
Insiders told The Post it was highly unlikely that Ma, 56, had permanently disappeared to one of China’s dreaded ‘black sites’ reserved for the country’s dissidents. According to some rumors, he is also not in Singapore.
Instead, he probably cools his heels at home or in a ‘very comfortable place’ where an expert said he was going to review ‘Marxist lessons’ with party officials, a process called ‘includes supervision’.
While building his business in an almost larger than China itself, the free-spirited Mother, who is married with three children, travels the world. He knotted with stars such as Tom Cruise, Daniel Craig, Kevin Spacey and Nicole Kidman, ate with President Obama and former British Prime Minister David Cameron and swung around in Davos – while speaking the fluent English he learned as a child.
He even dressed like Elton John or Michael Jackson and performed their songs on stage while cracking jokes in front of thousands of Alibaba worshipers at company functions.
He acted more like an American billionaire than even the cunning, low-key Jeff Bezos – and that was his fault, China analysts say. In line with his outspoken ways, Ma told a conference in Shanghai in October about how backward the country’s state-owned banks and regulators were – a few days before Ma’s financial technology firm ANT Group prepared what would be the world’s largest IPO. be.
“Today’s financial system is the legacy of the Industrial era,” Ma declared in the infamous speech. ‘We need to set up a new one for the next generation and young people. We need to reform the current system. ”
Among other things, Ma exploded the bankers of the country because they have a ‘pawn shop mentality’.
Mom’s wings were suddenly clipped. He disappeared from the public eye, ANT’s IPO was canceled by order of Chinese President Xi Jinping – and China launched an antitrust investigation into Ma’s huge business.
“This is Icarus, a classic case of hubris,” Gordon Chang, author of “The Coming Collapse of China,” told The Post. ‘According to Jack Ma, he was a rock star, perhaps not more powerful than Xi Jianping, but bigger than the Central Bank. Therefore, the Party decides to take him down. They hit Jack Mom and hope it sends a message. ‘
It’s a hard fall for the man Ma Yun was born to parents who were traditional musicians in Hangzhou, in the southeastern part of China, about two hours from Shanghai. Mother was a rogue boy in a poor family who learned English at a young age by befriending Western tourists, as described in ‘Alibaba: The House that Jack Built’, by former Morgan Stanley employee Duncan Clark, which Ma in 1999 in the small apartment where he founded Alibaba.
Mom met Ken Morley, an Australian tourist, and his family when he was 14, and it led to a lifelong friendship. The Morleys took Mom to Australia for a visit in 1985 and Mom said the trip ‘changed his life. I learned to think for myself. ”
Mom’s new worldliness and ambition, however, did not help him at school. He failed the infamous difficult entrance exam for China twice. Eventually he makes it with his third attempt and goes to Hangzhou Teacher’s Institute, where he obtained a degree in English in 1988.
Mom met his future wife, Cathy, at university, and they married in 1988. They live with their three children in their hometown of Hangzhou.
After college, he encountered more obstacles and was reportedly turned down for more than 12 jobs, even one at KFC.
Eventually, he was hired as an English teacher at $ 12 an hour. He also set up a translation company, but on a visit to the USA in 1995, he discovered the internet and started start-ups when he returned to China.
After several mistakes, he formed Alibaba in 1999 with 17 friends from his small apartment in Hangzhou. The initial concept – online shopping for small businesses – attracted $ 25 million from investors in the first year.
Alibaba is by most estimates the largest online trading company in the world. In addition to shopping, it also includes banking, technology and cloud computing.
Moms have seen how different he is from most internet billionaires who are math, science or coding. He prefers the kind of wild publicity stunts associated with Richard Branson, and according to insiders, he started taking the corporate celebration to the Alibaba stage. He wore a blonde wig and headdress to sing with The Lion King in 2009. In 2017, he sat on top of a motorcycle in a mask and a Michael Jackson outfit while dancing on ‘Billie Jean’, and then a ‘formation style’ performance with backup dancers.
Today, Ma is not a manager or board member of Alibaba or ANT, but he is the largest Alibaba shareholder with shares worth at least $ 25 billion.
Alibaba lost more than $ 110 billion in market value on December 24 when China officially launched the investigation. The Chinese government has also told state media to report on the investigation into Alibaba in December, according to the Financial Times.
It is not uncommon for China to expel some of their esteemed tycoons and celebrities from the public for a transgression, and they show who is the boss. The country’s biggest movie star, Fan Bingbing, disappeared in 2018 due to alleged tax evasion and was out of sight for months. She eventually wrote a false apology to the Communist Party on her social media pages and allegedly paid a tax bill of at least $ 70 million.
No one knows where Bingbing disappeared to, but one source told Vulture that she was kept under ‘residential supervision in a designated place’, which is described as a holiday resort in the coastal province of Jiangsu.
In Mom’s case, he was a no-show as a judge in the finale of a contest program for entrepreneurs called ‘Africa’s Business Heroes’ sponsored by his philanthropic organization in Africa.
Alibaba spokesmen said there was a ‘scheduling conflict’ that kept Mom from performing. While some reports from China say Ma is just keeping a low profile, while Chinese regulators are reviewing Alibaba’s big books and recommending a restructuring of ANT, the situation looks serious, if not sinister.
Some say the West has opened the young Mother’s eyes too much and now he’s got what he deserves.
“Jack Ma is a gangster,” Peter Navarro, director of trade and manufacturing policy at the White House and author of the 2011 book “Death By China: Confronting the Dragon,” told The Post. ‘He runs a company called Alibaba. Complete the thought: Forty thieves. He set up a business with stolen goods using our eBay business model. He stole all the e-commerce technology from us. ”
But despite all his cunning, Mom could not see what was obvious to him and everyone around him, Navarro said. “Xs have been consolidating power for the past four to five years.”
“He is doing the same to Chinese oligarchs as Putin to Russian oligarchs. They get money and fall in love with the West and forget where they came from. Then they are slapped. There is a Chinese expression called ‘kill the chicken, scare the monkey’ which means to make an example of someone. This is what they do to him. They will probably make him come back, but his orders are to just keep quiet and make money. ‘
Singleton agreed.
“He will appear again and will have to repent in public, but not on his terms,” Singleton said. ‘But I bet Jack Ma will keep it because he does not want to see this massive thing he’s built up blow up. He is a strategic thinker and he is still someone to be reckoned with. ‘