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Ryan Knutson: Ma's also famous for throwing massive company parties where he'd sing and perform on stage in front of thousands of people.Ryan Knutson: But then in 2020, after giving a speech that criticized Chinese regulators, Jack Ma all but disappeared and people started wondering.Speaker 4: The Chinese billionaire business magnate has not been seen in public since October when he...
Jing Yang: In December 2020, that is one month after Ant's IPO was called off, Alibaba was raided by Chinese authorities. Coming to the following year in April, Alibaba was slapped with a $2.8 billion fine for antitrust violations. Jing Yang: Coming into the summer of 2021, a couple of things happened. The first was DiDi Global, the ride hailing giant, so China's version of Uber, went on a multi-billion dollar IPO in New York. And just a couple of days after that, the Chinese government came out and said that they were doing the IPO without the consent from Chinese regulators, and that they're launching a probe into the company for potential or alleged wrongdoings.
Jing Yang: Yes. That speech really is the watershed moment to the China we're seeing now, to how they have been treating the private sector. The so-called China corporate crackdown really started from that speech. Jack Ma really is just the bellwether of the flourishing Chinese internet sector. He's the ambassador of China's success over the last two decades. When he was seen as being brought down just by making a speech, that had a huge impact.
Jing Yang: Jack, at that time, was still traveling overseas, started receiving outreaches from retired party officials and other tycoons. The message they sent to Jack is, "Be a patriot," and, "it's time to come back and make contribution to the development of China." This is based on people we spoke with.Jing Yang: It's still unknown what kind of deal, so to speak, that he struck with Beijing. There may or may not be a deal, and we don't know simply.
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