Following 'Disappearance' Of Jack Ma, Chinese Communist Party Plans To Nationalise His Alibaba And ANT Group

Amid the mysterious disappearance of Chinese Billionaire Jack Ma from public view after criticising China's regulators and state run banks, now the Chinese government is considering nationalisation of Jack Ma's Alibaba and the Ant Group, reports Outlook.

Ma, the founder of Alibaba Group who is worth a whopping $60 billion has been termed as a "money-grabbing vampire who exploits the poor", by Chinese state outlets.

In November 2020, the Wall Street Journal reported that the Chinese President Xi Jinping personally scuttled Ant Group's $37 billion initial public offering.

Jack Ma, the founder of Ant Group, is said to have earned the wrath of Chinese leadership for launching a public attack on the country's financial watchdogs, regulatory landscape and state-owned banks.

During an address he delivered at Bund Summit in Shanghai on 24 Oct 2020, Ma criticised the regulatory system for stifling innovation and called for a new set of regulatory reform to fuel growth.

The speech is said to have angered Chinese leadership and set off a chain of events that torpedoed the listing of Ant.

Soon after Ma's scathing attack on the regulatory constraints, state regulators began compiling reports including one on how Ant had used digital financial products like Huabei, a virtual credit card service, to encourage poor and young people to build up debt.