Who is Jack Ma?
Jack Ma is the co-founder and former executive chairman of the company Alibaba Group and one of the richest men in the world. He was born in China in 1964 and he came from a poor family with his parents being simple musical performers. He studied English and worked at some point in his life as a lecturer.
In 1994, he started his first company, a translation agency, and one year later the second one, China Pages. After a friend introduced him to the world of the internet, he purchased his first computer when he was 33 and began building websites for Chinese businesses. His current net worth is about 61,4 billion dollars. During the Covid-19 pandemic, Ma has donated medical supplies to the United States and to many countries on other continents proving that he is not only an investor but also a philanthropist.
Alibaba
In 1999, Ma and his team created Alibaba, a company with nine subsidiaries which are Alibaba.com, Taobao Marketplace, Tmall, eTao, Alibaba Cloud Computing, Juhuasuan, 1688.com, AliExpress.com, and Alipay. It is now one of the largest Chinese multinational conglomerations of retail, e-commerce, and technology. At first, to win the game and surpass other businesses like eBay, he launched a secret operation called Taobao in 2003 and this led to the introduction of Alipay as a secure online transaction portal. Then, eBay expressed an interest in buying Ma’s company but he refused and signed a contract with Yahoo.
Ma, except Alibaba, has also a stake in the online payment service Ant Group. He resigned from the board of Alibaba in 2019 and made only a few public appearances since then through media and philanthropic events. By 2014, Alibaba became legendary via the world’s largest IPO while the company’s net worth this year was approximately 500 billion dollars.
The controversial speech
In October 2020, Ma suggested that lots of reforms should be done in the financial system. In this speech, many officials of the regulatory organizations were present. This led to the suspension of a planned IPO of Ma’s Ant Group, by the Chinese authorities and an investigation launched against his companies. They have criticized the company for edging out rivals from the market and hurting consumer rights. From November 2020 till January 2021 nobody had seen Ma in public and some people thought he might have been placed under house arrest or otherwise detained or that he wasn’t still alive.
Ma had accused Chinese banks of operating with a ‘pawn-shop mentality. These declarations made furious the banking establishment and reached the attention of President Xi Jinping. After this, Ma and his colleagues were invited for a meeting with the regulators and soon the shares in his company fell and the Shangai Stock Exchange suspended the planned initial public offering of Ant Group two days before its launch. Some experts explained that with this move, Ma crossed a red line and that is why he disappeared till 20 January 2021. That day, he resurfaced in the form of a short video address for a charity event. In February he was, also, seen playing golf on the island of Hainan. Because of his statements, he is now keeping a low profile.
In general, the Chinese government launched an antitrust campaign and anti-monopoly investigation into Alibaba, and before some days it had fined 12 companies including Tencent and Baidu over 10 deals that are said violated anti-monopoly rules. The regulators are concerned about the technology giants’ influence over public opinion. China is trying to keep safety as its priority as it has been attacked by the USA and because of the rapid establishment of 5G all over the world.
In conclusion, Alibaba has emerged as the leader in luxury e-commerce in China. Analysts suggest that the Chinese government has to keep an eye on tech companies only in the light of political developments because China still doesn’t have strong foundations and the same control mechanisms as a country in the West.
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