Free Republic

As the global economic intelligentsia debates how to “decouple” or “de-risk” from China, Elon Musk clearly didn’t get the memo. The Tesla founder was feted like a returning king in Beijing this week. From the moment his private jet arrived on Tuesday, Musk is reportedly being called “Brother Ma,” putting him in rarified league with Alibaba billionaire Jack Ma. There are many takeaways from Musk’s first China visit in three years. One is that not everyone is decoupling from China, least of all the globe’s most influential electric-vehicle (EV) evangelist and owner of Twitter. Another: the future of EV production...

Alibaba founder Jack Ma has returned to China, the South China Morning Post (SCMP) reported on Monday (March 27), ending a more than year-long sojourn overseas that was viewed by industry as reflecting the sober mood of China's private businesses. Ma, one of China's best known entrepreneurs, left mainland China in late 2021 and has been seen in photographs in Japan, Australia and Thailand in the months since. Once one of the country's most outspoken businessmen, he retreated from the public limelight in late 2020 after criticising China's regulatory system that was later blamed for triggering a wide-ranging regulatory crackdown...

In 2020, Foreign Policy published a report describing the many ways in which Chinese tech companies were helping China's Ministry of State Security (MSS) to process stolen data — much of it stolen from U.S. citizens: China has, to date, stolen the data of 80% of Americans. One of the companies mentioned in the extensive report was Alibaba, the e-commerce giant headquartered in the ancient Chinese city of Hangzhou. Answerable ultimately to the Chinese Communist Party, the multinational retail and tech colossus was recently accused of conducting espionage for the CCP by a Belgian minister. Alibaba isn't just processing stolen...

The Chinese government is buying shares in Alibaba, Tencent and other tech companies to be more deeply involved in their businesses, sources told the Financial Times. The stakes usually involve a 1% holding in a key segment and are known as "special management shares," which give Beijing rights over certain decisions at the companies. That allows the Communist Party to gain greater influence...

Billionaire has spent almost six months in Japan after largely disappearing from public viewJack Ma, the Alibaba founder and once the richest business leader in China, has been living in central Tokyo for almost six months, amid Beijing’s continuing crackdown on the country’s technology sector and its most powerful businessmen. Ma’s months-long stay in Japan with his family has included stints in hot spring and ski resorts in the countryside outside Tokyo and regular trips to the US and Israel, according to people with direct knowledge of his whereabouts. Ma has largely disappeared from public view since he criticised Chinese...

Video has emerged showing a twin-boom tail configured drone crashing into a Russian oil refinery in Novoshakhtinsk, in the Rostov region, on the border with Ukraine, this morning. There is already much speculation that the incident was some kind of ‘kamikaze’ drone strike conducted by the Ukrainian Armed Forces. While the identity of the mysterious drone is yet to be established, initial analysis suggests it may have been an adapted, commercially available product that is available on the Chinese marketplace website Alibaba. Footage of the incident apparently first appeared on the Telegram messaging service this morning before being distributed more...

Way back in 2019, long before Alibaba founder Jack Ma's falling out with the CCP (or, we should say, when the strains in their relationship were far less visible in the business press), we reported the following prediction from Hayman Capital's Kyle Bass: That Jack Ma would be "jailed, or disappeared" shortly after stepping down as Alibaba's chairman.When Ma abruptly disappeared after the CCP sabotaged the (Ma-led) IPO for Ant Group, Alibaba's financial arm that had become widely used within the Chinese market, we feared the worst.And even though Ma eventually resurfaced, things have never been the same for a...

Rep. Elaine Luria – a member of the Congressional January 6th Commission – has six-figure investments in a Chinese Communist Party-linked tech firm flagged by the U.S. State Department for aiding the regime’s military and espionage capabilities, The National Pulse can reveal. The Virginia Congresswoman‘s most recent financial disclosure reveals an investment worth $250,000 to $500,000 in Alibaba, a Chinese e-commerce giant whose executives include powerful members of the Chinese Communist Party. Alibaba has also been involved in the “research, production, and repair of weapons and equipment for the People’s Liberation Army (PLA)” and has a “deep record of cooperation...

Yahoo has shut down its services in mainland China, becoming the second Western tech giant to pull the plug on China over the past month.The company stopped providing content for mainland Chinese users as of Nov. 1, according to a statement from its official website. “Products and services remain unaffected in all other global locations,” it said.Yahoo made the decision “[i]n recognition of the increasingly challenging business and legal environment in China,” a company spokesperson told The Epoch Times in an email on Tuesday, adding that “Yahoo remains committed to the rights of our users and a free and open...

It has been exactly a year since Chinese businessman Jack Ma publicly criticised his communist government and since then he’s lost hundreds of billions of dollars of his vast fortune. Over the last 12 months, his business, Alibaba — pegged as China’s version of eBay, Amazon and PayPal all rolled into one — has lost around US$373 billion (A$497 billion). According to Bloomberg, Alibaba’s fall from grace is the single biggest financial loss a business has ever endured. On October 24 last year, Mr Ma made a now-infamous speech at a business summit where he went viral for condemning the...

Alibaba shares surged more than six percent on Wednesday after billionaire founder Jack Ma was reported to be in Europe, fuelling investor hopes that the worst of China's regulatory crackdown for the internet giant might be over. Ma has kept a low profile ever since mainland officials spiked what would have been a world record $37 billion initial public offering for Alibaba's financial group Ant last November. That shock decision kicked off what became a cascading series of crackdowns by Chinese authorities on a host of tech and other industries deemed to have become too powerful, unregulated or monopolistic. Ma's...

Largely out of public view since a regulatory clampdown on his empire late last year - Chinese billionaire and Alibaba co-founder Jack Ma has recently been spotted meeting with business associates in Hong Kong, two sources tell Reuters. Ma's recent visit to the Asian financial hub was his first in a year, a source revealed. Ma has been keeping a low profile ever since Chinese regulators pulled the plug on what was to be the record setting $37 billion IPO for his Ant Financial group, seen by many as retaliation for a speech he gave last October, in which he...

Alibaba Group Holding Ltd dismissed 10 employees for publicising a female colleague's account of sexual assault allegations against a former manager, Bloomberg News reported on Monday (Aug 30), citing people familiar with the matter. The company fired the 10 employees for sharing screenshots of the woman's post in the public domain after removing watermarks that bore their IDs, the Bloomberg report said, citing an internal announcement from last week. The employees were fired for violating policies against exposing content on employee forums, Bloomberg reported, citing the people familiar. Three other employees have also been reprimanded for making inappropriate comments in...

Given the recent decimation in U.S. listed China based stocks, it is becoming abundantly clear who is running the show in China.And no one person is coming to that realization quicker than Jack Ma. Once revered as a beacon of success and entrepreneurship out of China, Ma's outspoken nature and boisterous antics saw him fall out of favor with the Chinese Communist Party - quickly.Such was the topic of a new, comprehensive Wall Street Journal report, which detailed the lesson Ma is now learning first hand: there is only one most powerful man in China. How did Ma - who...

According to Alibaba Group’s 2021 annual report, Jack Ma, founder of the Chinese e-commerce giant, appears to no longer be a shareholder. Ma held more than 1 billion Alibaba shares in 2020.On July 27, the company announced it filed its annual report, on Form 20-F, for the fiscal year ending March 31, 2021, to the United States Securities and Exchange Commission.The 2021 annual report shows that the company’s founder, Jack Ma, is no longer listed as a shareholder. While Joseph Tsai, the executive vice-chairman, currently holds 306,883,064 common shares, accounting for 1.4 percent of shares, all directors and executives as...

“To get rich is glorious.” - Deng Xiaoping “Among the richest men in China, few have good endings.” - Jack Ma No good endings? Indeed. Start with this: We know more about the whereabouts and the condition of Alexei Navalny, Vladimir Putin’s prize prisoner, than we do about Jack Ma. Last Fall Jack Ma was rich, and famous, and we knew all about him, followed his every move. He was in fact the richest man in China, and the most famous living Chinese person (according to polls). He was poised to crown his career with a triumphant public offering for...

Belgium’s Minister of Justice Vincent Van Quickenborne raised concerns over Chinese espionage in connection to Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba’s logistics center under construction in Belgium’s Liège Airport. Liège Airport is the seventh-largest airport in Europe. It is situated at the heart of the Amsterdam-Paris-Frankfurt golden triangle, a very dense area of production in Europe. Alibaba Group and the Belgium government signed an agreement in December 2018 to open Alibaba’s first Electronic World Trade Platform (eWTP) in Europe. The logistics arm of Alibaba Group and Liège Airport also signed a contract to lease a 220,000-square-meter area to build a logistics hub...

The Chinese regime fined Alibaba $2.8 billion in April under anti-monopoly law, highlighting the regime’s comprehensive review of Chinese internet companies.However, Tencent was only fined $310,000 despite its comparable monopolistic influence in China. For a mega-corporation like Tencent, a fine of this size is equivalent to pennies.The CCP’s biggest grievance with Alibaba is its very large share of the CCP’s precious authority over Chinese banking and finance. However, this alone doesn’t justify the disparity in fines. Tencent’s monopolistic actions in many leading industries are in no way smaller than Alibaba’s.China’s three main technology companies are Baidu, Alibaba, and Tencent, forming...

BEIJING—Alibaba Group, the world’s biggest e-commerce company, was fined 18.3 billion yuan ($2.8 billion) by Chinese regulators on Saturday for anti-competitive tactics, as the ruling Communist Party tightens control over fast-growing tech industries. Party leaders worry about the dominance of China’s biggest internet companies, which are expanding into finance, health services, and other sensitive areas. The party says anti-monopoly enforcement, especially in tech, is a priority this year. Alibaba was fined for “abusing its dominant position” to limit competition by retailers that use its platforms and hindering “free circulation” of goods, the State Administration for Market Regulation announced. It said...

Another rough day for Jack Ma as Beijing continues big tech crackdownBeijing has pulled Alibaba’s UC Browser from Chinese app stores amid accusations of unfair play and a government crackdown on tech. UC Browser is made by Chinese mobile Internet company UCWeb, a subsidiary of Alibaba, that on a state-owned TV channel was accused of luring users away from their intended online search target by allowing private hospitals to bid for the names of well-known hospitals in keyword searches. The browser has since vanished from app stores including those run by Huawei, Xiaomi and Tencent. The browser remains available on...