{"id":45449,"date":"2021-01-04T09:31:22","date_gmt":"2021-01-04T13:31:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/?p=45449"},"modified":"2021-01-04T09:32:04","modified_gmt":"2021-01-04T13:32:04","slug":"where-in-the-world-is-alibaba-founder-jack-ma-officially-missing-for-2-months","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/?p=45449","title":{"rendered":"Where in the world is Alibaba Founder Jack Ma? &#8216;Officially&#8217; missing for 2 months!"},"content":{"rendered":"<h1>Alibaba Founder Jack Ma Has Been Missing For 2 Months<\/h1>\n<p><!--more-->ZeroHedge.com<\/p>\n<p>About 14 months ago during an interview with Real Vision, investor Kyle Bass &#8211; who has been one of the most prominent American critics of the Chinese Communist Party,\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.zerohedge.com\/news\/2019-04-25\/quiet-panic-kyle-bass-hong-kongs-looming-financial-political-crisis\">while also anticipating the political troubles in Hong Kong that inspired the protest movement of 2019<\/a>\u00a0&#8211; predicted that retiring Alibaba Chairman Jack Ma would be &#8220;disappeared&#8221; by Beijing within a year. The gist of Bass&#8217;s argument was that Ma had outlived his usefulness, and that Beijing would never tolerate a billionaire with so much power and influence, both at home, and in the West.<\/p>\n<div class=\"twitter-tweet twitter-tweet-rendered\"><iframe id=\"twitter-widget-0\" class=\"\" title=\"Twitter Tweet\" src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/embed\/index.html?dnt=false&amp;embedId=twitter-widget-0&amp;frame=false&amp;hideCard=false&amp;hideThread=false&amp;id=1171508657948778497&amp;lang=en&amp;origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.zerohedge.com%2Fgeopolitical%2Falibaba-founder-jack-ma-has-been-missing-2-months&amp;siteScreenName=zerohedge&amp;theme=light&amp;widgetsVersion=ed20a2b%3A1601588405575&amp;width=550px\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\" data-tweet-id=\"1171508657948778497\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\"><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p>As it turns out, Bass was off by about 1 month. Because following some rumblings published by the FT on New Year&#8217;s Eve, it appears the Western press has just woken up to the fact that nobody has seen Jack Ma in two months. Late last night in New York,\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/au.finance.yahoo.com\/news\/jack-ma-missing-232138645.html\">Yahoo Finance<\/a>\u00a0reported that Jack Ma is officially &#8216;missing&#8217;.<\/p>\n<p>The\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.ft.com\/content\/a91dfeae-da1e-4348-8212-bbfbe94d93bd\">FT reported<\/a>\u00a0a few days ago that Ma had been abruptly replaced by an Alibaba executive for the taping of the finale of his show &#8220;Africa&#8217;s Business Heroes&#8221;.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Mr Ma was replaced as a judge in the final of Africa\u2019s Business Heroes, a television contest for budding entrepreneurs, his photograph was removed from the judging webpage, and he was conspicuously left out of a promotional video.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Now, Yahoo Finance is saying that nobody has seen Ma in public for at least two months.<\/p>\n<p>Unfortunately for Ma, this isn&#8217;t exactly a surprise. When the executive offered a light-hearted criticism of certain aspects of China&#8217;s regulatory framework, claiming it stifled innovation, it seemed like the CCP used his comments as a pretext to chasten him. Immediately,\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.zerohedge.com\/geopolitical\/communist-party-expands-crackdown-chinas-tech-billionaires-after-spoiling-ant\">the IPO for the spin off of Ant Financial,<\/a>\u00a0a sister company to Alibaba, which marked the start of an &#8220;anti-monopoly&#8221; push against Chinese tech giants that has hammered their shares (in mainland markets, and abroad) and inspired serious concerns about a state takeover of the heretofore independent (though certainly subservient) tech sector.<\/p>\n<p>Following the spoiled IPO, the CCP has ordered Ant Financial to step back from some of its businesses as part of some kind of &#8220;rectification&#8221; plan to prevent the company from growing any larger. Many fear similar measures might be imposed on China&#8217;s other tech giants like Tencent and JD.com. Of course, the whole episode mirrors an anti-monopoly push against American tech giants being launched via a series of civil lawsuits in American courts filed by the DoJ and the AGs of many states.<\/p>\n<p>It has been reported that Ma is a member of the Communist Party. That, of course, wouldn&#8217;t make him immune to prosecution. In fact, it could be used as an excuse to heighten whatever punishment he might receive.<\/p>\n<p>What&#8217;s more, all this is happening as the EU is pursuing a historic trade deal that would further integrate its economy with that of China.<\/p>\n<p>Right now, only one thing looks certain: Wherever Jack Ma, it&#8217;s probably not somewhere that anybody &#8211; especially an internationally respected billionaire &#8211; would want to be.<\/p>\n<p>___<br \/>\n<a href=\"https:\/\/www.zerohedge.com\/geopolitical\/alibaba-founder-jack-ma-has-been-missing-2-months\">https:\/\/www.zerohedge.com\/geopolitical\/alibaba-founder-jack-ma-has-been-missing-2-months<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Alibaba Founder Jack Ma Has Been Missing For 2 Months<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-45449","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45449","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=45449"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45449\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=45449"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=45449"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=45449"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}