China Asks Jack Ma’s Ali Baba To Divest Media Assets; Fear Of Influencing Public Opinion Looks Obvious

 

China government’s crackdown on Chinese billionaire and Alibaba Group founder Jack Ma manifested in the targeting of his e-commerce behemoth Alibaba and finance affiliate Ant Group took a new turn with the government directing the Alibaba Group Holding Limited to divest its media assets.

Jack Ma’s company has big stakes in micro-blogging platform Weibo and news outlets including South China Morning Post, the leading English-language newspaper in Hong Kong.

China’s worry on Jack Ma’s influence on public opinion

It looks obvious the China government is worried about the tech giant's influence over public opinion, mainly on social media, and hence, wants the media assets to be disposed of.

Ma’s inspiring image took a different turn from the second half of 2020 aided by the pandemic driven resentment against the super-rich among the masses; the China ruling party leveraged that too.

Alipay trouble and targeting of Ant Group

Ma and the Chinese government locked horns after he launched Alipay. Finance is a state-controlled domain in China and Alipay was breaking that structure. Also, Alibaba’s access to big data comparable to Facebook or Google also scared the Chinese government.

In December 2020, Chinese officials opened an anti-trust investigation into Alibaba, and added pressure on Ant Group, the fintech giant Ma spun out of the powerhouse e-commerce company.

In November, China authorities quashed Ant's planned blockbuster IPO, in a reaction to Ma dubbing China’s banks as “pawnshops”. He accused the banks of lending only to those who submitted collateral and castigated financial regulators on the “minimising risk” motto.

Ma who had good relations with the Chinese government for over two decades got into the bad books when in October 2020 at a conference the Alibaba founder slammed the financial system and called the regulators as lacking in farsightedness.

Ma has already stepped down as the chairman of Alibaba but owns a big chunk of the company’s share. He is still part of a core group that selects Alibaba’s board members.

According to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, Jack Ma is the 25th richest person in the world with a personal wealth pegged at more than $50 billion.

Apex Bank Wants Image-based Cheque Truncation System Expanded In All Bank Branches by Sept 30

 

The RBI has asked banks to implement image-based Cheque Truncation System in all branches by September 30

In Feb, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) announced pan-India coverage of CTS by bringing all bank branches under the image-based clearing mechanism. The CTS is in use since 2010 and presently covers around 1,50,000 branches.

The Reserve Bank on Monday asked banks to implement the image-based Cheque Truncation System (CTS) in all branches by September 30.

This is aimed at faster settlement of cheques resulting in better customer service. As of now, 18,000 bank branches are still outside any formal clearing arrangement.

In February, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) announced pan-India coverage of CTS by bringing all bank branches under the image-based clearing mechanism.

The CTS has been in use since 2010 and presently covers around 1,50,000 branches. All the erstwhile 1,219 non-CTS clearing houses (ECCS centres) have been migrated to CTS effective September 2020.

However, there are thousands of branches outside any formal clearing arrangement and customers face hardships due to longer time taken and cost involved in collection of cheques presented by them, the RBI said.

“To leverage the availability of CTS and provide uniform customer experience irrespective of location of her/his bank branch, it has been decided to extend CTS across all bank branches in the country,” the RBI circular said.

Now banks have to ensure that all their branches participate in image-based CTS under respective grids by September 30, 2021, it said.

Banks are free to adopt a model of their choice, like deploying suitable infrastructure in every branch or following a hub and spoke model and concerned banks should coordinate with the respective Regional Offices of RBI to operationalise this, it said.

Benefits of Cheque Truncation System

Cheque Truncation System (CTS) targets quicker cheque clearance and is discontinuing the flow of the physical cheque in its way of clearing.

Instead, an electronic image of the cheque is transferred with vital essential data adding elegance and speed to cheque processing saving time and cost and expanding efficiency in human resource rationalization, business process re-engineering and enhanced customer service.

 

CTS signals a great move towards Digital India. IMPS, RTGS and NEFT were game-changers for the banking sector. The implementation of grid-based Cheque Truncation System cheque clearing process has added speed and operational efficiency in addition to other benefits such as business process re-engineering, cost-effectiveness, better service and adoption of cutting-edge technology.

• ·       Clearing related frauds less plausible

·       Probability of cheques misplaced in transit is eliminated
·       CTS is advanced and secure.
·       It provides quicker clearance of cheques
·       Reduces operational risk related to paper clearing