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.