Well...
Chinese billionaire Jack Ma, the founder of Alibaba and Ant Group, is suspected missing, Jessica Yun reported for Yahoo Finance.
The 56-year-old businessman has not been seen in public for more than two months, per the report.
Ma has been in the spotlight recently as China has cracked down on his business empire. In late December, Chinese regulators launched an antitrust investigation into Alibaba, the country's biggest e-commerce company that some refer to as "the Amazon of China." And in November, China had introduced a series of new regulations that put a halt to what would have been the massive initial public offering of Ma's fintech company, Ant Group.
The new rules came weeks after Ma criticized China's financial regulatory system at a conference in Shanghai in October. At the conference, Ma reportedly dismissed the global financial regulations used by China as "an old people's club" and said, "We can't use yesterday's methods to regulate the future."
He was the richest man in China, but lost the position after CCP regulators hit him with antitrust investigations. Now he's number 4. Assuming he's still alive, that is. Apparently, last November, Ma was abruptly replaced as a judge on the African talent show he founded, "Africa's Business Heroes" due to the aforementioned mysterious dissapearance from public view.
In general, China isn't alien to cases of missing high-profile figures. In 2018 alone,
- Actress Fan Bingbing,
- Three Canadian citizens,
- Gene-editing scientist He Jiankui,
- Literally the head of the Interpol, Meng Hongwei,
- Award-winning photographer Lu Guang,
- Ink-splash girl Dong Yaoqiong,
- Christian church leader Wang Yi,
Michael Caster, a China researcher and author of The People's Republic of the Disappeared, told the ABC that while true numbers are impossible to calculate due to the secrecy of the process, he estimates the numbers are "easily in the several hundreds", in addition to "upwards of a million Uyghur and minority group members".
He said those detained could be held for a few weeks, months or much longer. Occasionally they don't come back at all.
When they do come back, it is often to face court.
Mr Caster said most detentions included "extreme physical or mental abuse raising to the level of torture", with the main goal being to obtain a forced confession. Source.
Meanwhile, in 2019, another Chinese billionaire Guo Wengui (who fled China as a fugitive in 2014) said that in the next year, Ma would likely end up in jail or dead because China wants to "take back" Ma's lucrative Ant Group.
Do you think that he's really missing? Is this a sign of the CCP's increasing authoritarianism, under pressure of the upcoming 2030's aging crisis and the potential end of economic growth that threatens to end the "gentlemen's agreement" between the Chinese citizen (who receive continued prosperity) and the CCP (who receive political obedience)?
Or is all of this just baseless rumours and media fearmongering, and the guy is perfectly fine?
