Posted on 01/03/2021 1:03:21 PM PST by SeekAndFind
The Chinese tech billionaire behind Asia's version of Amazon has reportedly not been seen in public for more than two months after falling foul of President Xi Jinping.
Jack Ma, one of China's most successful and outspoken tycoons, criticised the country's 'pawnshop' financial regulators and state-owned banks in an incendiary speech in Shanghai in October.
He called for reform of a system that 'stifled business innovation' and likened global banking regulations to an 'old people's club'.
The speech angered the Chinese government, which viewed Ma's criticisms as an attack on the authority of the Communist Party, and led to its extraordinary clampdown on Ma's business activities.
In November, officials in Beijing 'dressed down' Ma and suspended the blockbuster $37billion initial public offering of his Ant Group on the direct order of President Xi, the Wall Street Journal reports.
They then advised Ma to remain in China before launching an anti-monopoly investigation into Ma's Alibaba Group Holding on Christmas Eve, according to Bloomberg. Beijing also ordered Ma's financial tech company Ant Group to scale back its operations.
Ma then mysteriously disappeared from his Dragons' Den-style TV show Africa's Business Heroes just before the November final, while his photo was scrubbed from the show's judging panel webpage.
A spokesperson for Alibaba told the Financial Times that Ma could no longer be part of the judging panel 'due to a schedule conflict'.
But weeks before the final, Ma tweeted that he 'couldn't wait' to meet the contestants. There has been no activity since then on the father-of-three's Twitter account, one that had regularly seen several tweets a day.
Beijing has a history of ruthless action against its internal critics and in March a property tycoon disappeared after he called President Xi a 'clown' for his handling of the coronavirus crisis.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
* Friends of Ren Zhiqiang said they could not contact him and six months later he was sentenced to 18 years in prison after he 'voluntarily and truthfully confessed' to various crimes of corruption.
* Xian Jianhua, a billionaire financier, was snatched from a Hong Kong hotel in 2017 and taken to the mainland. He is said to remain under house arrest more than three years later, with no official word of his location.
* Hong Kong's leading media figure, Publisher Jimmy Lai was Arrested Under New National-Security Law for editorials written in the pro-democracy newspaper Apple Daily.
Sum-Ting Big wrong!
I bet he “sleeps with the fishes”.
Possibly suffering from a brain hemorrhage, a 9MM brain hemorrhage.
He’ll find work as a jiggolo.
He’s Dead Jim...
Hes either dead and they confiscated his money, or he has vanished somewhere on his own and gone to hiding. But either way, a communist dictatorship forced what has happened to him.
Was Jack Ma eaten by the hungry panda bear?
how many times has MItch been threatened over his wife’s shipping business and the sister that is one the board of Bank of China
The Chinese authoritarian state is well past the point of hunting down and attacking its enemies internationally. It also has enormous concentration camps for their despised and restive Muslim minority.
This being said, what kind of idiot thinks they can be a pest and remain in China? President Xi is a thug to the point where his lieutenants and toadies probably don’t even need to be ordered to be oppressive.
The “trickle down” theory of brutality.
He’s dead, Jim.
It’s a repulsive, rogue country. It’s even worse than rogue nations like Venezuela or Iran because of it’s obvious corrupting influence, e.g. Hunter Biden.
Anyone see his kidneys and liver?
the chicoms are very threatened bythe tens of millions chicaps
China will be torn apart by the schism that is begun as evidenced by the CCP CINO Ma disappearance.
A quick message to Jack’s people: Send me $50million and I’ll buy a private island and he can hang out there as long as he needs. It’s a win win.
Assuming he’s hiding and not dead or in a gulag.
I would say it’s just another sad covid death, but everyone knows there haven’t been any cases of covid in China for months.
better than 50% chance
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.