Jack Ma has finally come to an end to an exile of several years by returning to China.
The founder of Alibaba, a Chinese e-commerce giant, had quietly left the country after a major reframing from the political power. Could his return be a sign of a relaxation in Beijing’s reining in of economic players?
The Return of the Prodigy
Jack Ma again treads the ground of the native land! The billionaire behind Alibaba finally finds his country. For almost three years, he had been wandering around the world. He had been briefly seen in the United States, Thailand and Japan. The reason for this exile? Criticism in 2020 of Chinese banking regulators as it sought to take its payment subsidiary Ant Group public.
Since then, the setbacks have multiplied for the businessman, with a fine of 2.3 billion dollars and an obligation to restructure, then the abandonment of control by Jack Ma of his company. So many movements which, it seems, contented Beijing and loosened the grip around his person, since he has just paid a visit to a school in Hangzhou, where the head office of Alibaba is located.
A positive signal for Chinese companies?
What explains this astonishing return? According to the news agency Reuters, the teams of the new Prime Minister Li Qiang had been campaigning for several months for a return of Jack Ma to China. This cleverly organized operation could illustrate the new relationship between the economic world and political power, marked by appeasement, as also shown by the end of the regulatory investigation which affected the carpooling giant Didi.
China may indeed need to regain the trust of its entrepreneurs as the country faces a wave of sanctions in the tech sector brought by its rival, the United States. With an international market less open to acquisitions from the Middle Kingdom, Beijing will be more and more dependent in the future on the successes of its flagships to maintain its status. What pushes the CCP to be less repressive with its companies?
Source : Le Figaro
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