Roving Periscope: Zhang in jail, now Jack Ma goes ‘missing’ in China

Virendra Pandit 

New Delhi: Suicide is as old as human existence. Individuals know when they kill themselves. But nations do not realize they are committing suicide. Even the Dragon does not!

One can see the ground in the corridors of power slipping from under their feet when the rulers start taking revenge for their failures on the ruled.

For, only last week China sentenced a former lawyer-turned-citizen journalist, Zhang Zhan, to four years in jail for her reporting from Wuhan as the COVID-19 outbreak began. This was almost a year after details of an “unknown viral pneumonia” surfaced in the central China city, making the People’s Republic of China an international pariah.

After a brief, routine hearing, a kangaroo court in Shanghai sent the unrepentant whistle-blower Zhan to jail for allegedly “picking quarrels and provoking trouble” during her reporting in the chaotic initial stages of the pandemic’s outbreak.

Now, China is rattled with rumors about the ‘disappearance’ of business tycoon Jack Ma, the second best-known Chinese face overseas after President-for-Life Xi Jinping.

Ma’s last tweet was seen on October 10 last year.

Wild rumors around the globally popular Chinese billionaire emerged when reports came in that the high-profile businessman has not been seen for more than two months. He has not made a public appearance since November 2020.

The Alibaba founder was also found missing from the final episode of his own talent show, Africa’s Business Heroes, which gives budding African entrepreneurs the chance to compete for a slice of US $1.5 million, media reported on Monday.

Ma was scheduled to be a judge at the show, but was replaced by an Alibaba executive in the November final, the United Kingdom’s Telegraph said. His picture was also taken off the website.

An Alibaba spokesperson said Ma was unable to take part on the judging panel “due to a schedule conflict” Financial Times reported.

Apprehensive that his followers might outnumber the Communist Party’s members, the government cracked down on Jack Ma and other home-growth billionaires whom a suspicious Xi Jinping fears as alternate power centers.

Ma’s business empire, Ant Group, has been under intense scrutiny by Beijing ever since he delivered a controversial speech in Shanghai on October 26, condemning China’s regulation system for stifling innovation and dubbed global banking rules as an “old people’s club”.

“Today’s financial system is the legacy of the Industrial Age,” Ma said in the speech, apparently referring to freedom of innovation required in the modern Knowledge Era.

“We must set up a new one for the next generation and young people. We must reform the current system.”

Days after his speech, Ant’s IPO (valued at a record-breaking USD 37 billion), which had already received the green light from China’s securities watchdog, was abruptly suspended, with the Shanghai Stock Exchange claiming that Ant had reported “significant issues such as the changes in financial technology regulatory environment”.

Reacting to this, veteran American investor Mark Mobius said the move was actually designed to curtail financial institutions from getting too big. “I believe the Chinese government stepped in because they realized that they had to regulate these companies so that they don’t … get too big,” he told a news channel.

“The Chinese government is waking up to the fact that they cannot allow these companies that dominate a particular sector and particularly the financial sector.”

Xi Jinping, already fighting against rebels in the Communist party, apprehended his rivals joining hands with the likes of Jack Ma. He directed the authorities to launch an anti-monopoly investigation into Alibaba in late December and told Ant Group to restructure its operations.

Ma has donated millions of face masks to Europe, the US, and the World Health Organisation in a bid to stem the pandemic. This skyrocketed his global popularity at a time when the Chinese government’s reputation plummeted to nadir since March 2020.

The billionaire’s charity work, with the Jack Ma Foundation, focuses on the areas of education, entrepreneurship, female leadership, and the environment.

The Foundation has distributed or pledged more than the US $300 million, Forbes reported.