Beijing, China
is the businessman China’s most famous and the symbol of “self-made man” for his compatriots. At 56, Jack Ma will have to deal with the revenge of the authorities, who seem determined to cut off his wings.
This Thursday, the State Administration for Market Regulation of China shake up the Chinese business world, where Alibaba and its charismatic founder Jack Ma symbolize the success of e-commerce, by announcing that this internet giant will be investigated for “suspicious monopoly practices.”
Is former English teacher, Officially ‘retired’ since last year from Alibaba received an insult from financial regulators, who also contacted Ant Group, a subsidiary of Alibaba, a world leader in online payments and of which Ma is the largest shareholder, to talk about “supervision and advice”.
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This happened a few weeks after Beijing thwarted the company’s IPO at the last minute, with which Jack Ma thought his fortune would exceed $ 70 billion (60 billion euros).
This fiasco cost Bill Ma billions, even making him lose China’s first fortune title, estimated at $ 58 billion.
The power of President Xi Jinping seems determined to fight the monopolistic tendencies of private groups like Alibaba, online sales platforms are used by hundreds of millions of Chinese.
An unprecedented setback for this millionaire, who predicted before anyone else the evolution of his compatriots towards e-commerce when he co-founded Alibaba in 1999.
The Chinese media often remembers his humble origins, a father who struggled to feed his family, his poor school results and his poorly paid small jobs until Alibaba’s creation in an apartment in Hangzhu, in the East China, with a capital of $ 60,000 he borrowed from friends.
Jack Ma (the Chinese name is Ma Yun) decided to leave his university teaching profession after discovering the internet and the possibility he offered companies to exchange their goods online.
This man quickly understood the potential of smartphones and was the pioneer, with his Alipay service, of electronic mobile payment, now ubiquitous in China, earning a visionary reputation.
Michael Jackson and the Communist Party
“The first time I used the internet, I typed in and said, ‘This is something that will change the world and China,'” he told CNN.
The take-off of Alibaba’s online trading platform, Taobao, forced the US eBay virtually to withdraw from the Chinese market in 2006, leaving its rival free.
Jack Ma is known for his eccentricities, in a rather serious Chinese business world. Much admired by his employees, he has often been compared to Steve Jobs, the legendary co-founder of Apple, although his style is more relaxed.
The successful and atypical businessman is at the same time a follower of tai chi, traditional Chinese gymnastics for inner and physical balance, took to the stage at a corporate party disguised as Michael Jackson and is a member of the very austere Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in power.
From Davos to Wall Street, he has alternated with global personalities and promised Donald Trump to create a million jobs in January 2017, when the American billionaire was about to enter the White House.
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He then withdrew that promise, using the argument of Trump’s trade war against China.
In September 2018, Jack Ma announced that he would retire a year later, at the age of 55, to devote himself to philanthropic projects in the field of education, which recalled the path followed by one of its models the founder of Microsoft, Bill Gates.
His rise always deserved criticism and enmity at the top of the Communist Party.
Jack Ma may have to rethink the slogan that has presided over his career and that he clearly set out in 2007 in Davos, the world finance event: “My philosophy is to be in love with power without marrying him. “.