Jack 'Uncle Horse' Ma Is a Bad Bet
by Gordon G. Chang • January 9, 2021 at 5:00 am
Beijing has... gone after Ma's business empire hard.
[R]egulators appear to be forcing Ant to restrict its profitable investment and loan businesses and making the company accept bank-like regulation. Tighter control would ensure that the fast-growing Ant would pose less of a challenge to state control of lending.
Rumor has it that Beijing ordered Ma not to leave the country. "His passport has supposedly been held by the Foreign Ministry for a long time," Anne Stevenson-Yang of J Capital Research told Gatestone, passing along financial community gossip.
Of course, this series of incidents also shows that foreign optimism about the Chinese markets—large inflows of capital have recently driven the Chinese currency sharply higher against the dollar—could be misplaced. If Jack Ma's business empire can be broken up—and that is what's happening—all foreign investment is at risk of confiscation.
Foreigners need to begin paying attention....
Jack Ma's fate, then, is a leading indicator.
Ma Yun, until recently China's richest individual, is in detention in a Chinese cell, is in hiding in China, is "embracing supervision" from the ruling Communist Party, or is in Singapore after having evaded Chinese authorities. One observer even argues Ma's disappearance, the object of intense speculation in China and elsewhere, is nothing more than a ruse.
Which version of the truth is true? Take your pick.
Facts are scarce. Jack Ma, as Ma is known outside China, possesses one of his country's most famous faces and evidently loves the limelight, but he has not been seen in public since the last day of October, vanishing soon after criticizing state bankers.
Ma's disappearance suggests deep troubles in China's financial circles and almost certainly problems in top Communist Party leadership ranks.
On October 24, Ma criticized China's state bankers at a high-profile event, the Bund Summit in Shanghai.
