{"id":140838,"date":"2020-12-24T11:47:16","date_gmt":"2020-12-24T08:47:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/tycoon-who-soared-on-chinas-tech-dreams-grounded-by-regulators\/"},"modified":"2020-12-24T11:47:16","modified_gmt":"2020-12-24T08:47:16","slug":"tycoon-who-soared-on-chinas-tech-dreams-grounded-by-regulators","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/tycoon-who-soared-on-chinas-tech-dreams-grounded-by-regulators\/","title":{"rendered":"#tycoon who soared on China’s tech dreams grounded by regulators"},"content":{"rendered":"

“#tycoon who soared on China’s tech dreams grounded by regulators<\/strong>”<\/p>\n

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\"Jack
\n Jack Ma’s rags-to-riches backstory has come to embody a self-confident generation of Chinese entrepreneurs ready to shake up the world
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Jack Ma, the ebullient and unconventional billionaire founder of tech giant Alibaba and the totem of China’s entrepreneurial brilliance, now finds himself up against a Communist leadership seemingly intent on hacking back his empire and issuing a lesson that no one is bigger than the party.<\/p>\n

Ma, the most recognisable face in Asian business with a fortune estimated at around $58 billion, has already faced the ignominy of having the world’s biggest-ever IPO spiked by Chinese regulators days before its launch.<\/p>\n

The November share sale was set to see his wealth bulge to more than $70 billion in a record-breaking listing of the group’s Ant Group financial arm in Hong Kong and Shanghai.<\/p>\n

But Chinese regulators abruptly pulled the deal, over what initially app<\/a>eared to be concerns about the company’s reach into the finances of hundreds of millions of Chinese people.<\/p>\n

It was a brutal public rebuke to Ma, who was then called in for dressing down by regulators and has since evaporated from the spotlight he normally so ably commands.<\/p>\n

Now China’s poster boy for enterprise finds himself again caught in the glare of the Communist-run state, with Thursday’s announcement of an anti-monopoly probe into Alibaba, the tech giant he founded, and the summoning of Ant Group by regulators.<\/p>\n

It is another public relations catastrophe for Ma, a Communist Party member, whose rags-to-riches backstory has come to embody a self-confident generation of Chinese entrepreneurs ready to shake up the world.<\/p>\n

Charismatic, diminutive and fast-talking, Ma was cash-strapped and working as an English teacher when someone showed him the internet on a 1990s trip<\/a> to the United States\u2014and he was hooked.<\/p>\n

He toyed with several internet-related projects, before convincing a group of friends to give him $60,000 to start a new business in 1999 in China, then still emerging as an economic giant.<\/p>\n

Alibaba was the result, an e-commerce empire founded from his bedroom in Hangzhou and which started an online shopping revolution and grew into a fintech titan.<\/p>\n

The company changed the shopping habits of hundreds of millions of Chinese people, and catapulted Ma into the global limelight.<\/p>\n

“The first time I used the internet, I touched on the keyboard and I find ‘well, this is something I believe, it is something that is going to change the world and change China’,” Ma once told CNN.<\/p>\n

In 2014, Alibaba listed in New York in a world-record $25 billion offering.<\/p>\n

Ant Group, in which Ma is the largest shareholder, is now the world-largest digital payments platform, claiming 731 million monthly users on the Alipay app. <\/p>\n

But there are fears it reaches too deeply into the pockets of ordinary Chinese with its micro-loans, investment and insurance products.<\/p>\n

Crossed the line?<\/b><\/p>\n

Ma long enjoyed an image as the benevolent and unconventional billionaire. <\/p>\n

Sometimes referred to in China as “Father Ma”, he is praised for his self-deprecation\u2014he recounts being rejected by Harvard “10 times”\u2014and a knack for lighting up company events with song-and-dance appearances as Lady Gaga, Snow White and Michael Jackson.<\/p>\n

As his fortune grew, Ma rebranded as a philanthropist\u2014in 2019 retiring from the business to focus on giving.<\/p>\n

But even his charitable work betrays an idiosyncratic touch.<\/p>\n

After footage of a little boy in a village in central China who looked like Ma went viral, the businessman promised to pay for him to go through university.<\/p>\n

But that reputation may be in the balance with the regulatory slap-down playing into a growing sense shared on China’s Twitter<\/a>-like Weibo that he has leaned into hubris by criticising fintech regulators.<\/p>\n

He has faced his share of travails over the years in a country where getting rich risks catching the attention of the powerful.<\/p>\n

Eyebrows were raised when the state-run People’s Daily revealed that he is a member of the Communist Party\u2014something Ma has never fully commented on.<\/p>\n

He had previously indicated that he preferred to keep the state at arm’s length, telling the World Economic Forum in 2007: “My philosophy is to be in love with the government, but never marry them.”<\/p>\n

But perhaps the biggest challenges remain ahead, as the size and scale of his business mean that relationship may need to be renegotiated.\n <\/p>\n\n

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Jack Ma: ebullient billionaire and totem of China’s rise\n <\/p><\/div>\n

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\n \u00a9 2020 AFP<\/p>\n

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Citation<\/strong>:
\n Jack Ma: tycoon who soared on China’s tech dreams grounded by regulators (2020, December 24)
\n retrieved 24 December 2020
\n from https:\/\/techxplore.com\/news<\/a>\/2020-12-jack-ma-tycoon-soared-china.html<\/p>\n

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