China is in economic trouble. Ma Yun, who had been punished before, has recently transformed into a signboard for the CCP to attract foreign investment from private enterprises. The Wall Street Journal quoted people familiar with the matter on March 30 as saying that Beijing had been contacting Ma Yun through retired CCP officials and rich people to lobby him to return to China.
According to people familiar with the matter, Jack Ma came to Hong Kong last week and originally planned to leave for Japan in the first few days of this week. “Hua Ri” said that it is not clear what prompted him to suddenly change his itinerary and return to the mainland. People speculated whether he had reached some kind of agreement with the Chinese government.
People familiar with the matter said that in the past few months, Beijing had repeatedly contacted Jack Ma through retired officials and other wealthy people, using “patriotism” as an excuse to let Jack Ma return to China.
“Patriotic” is a common rhetoric used by the CCP to unite the overseas Chinese elite. As early as the early days of the CCP’s establishment, it used similar arguments to encourage overseas scholars to return to China, so-called to devote themselves to the construction of the motherland. The extremely cruel method of personality punished intellectuals, leading to the destruction of countless families and even suicide.
Now this method is used on Jack Ma. People familiar with the matter told the Wall Street Journal that these officials and business people began to contact Ma Yun following the end of the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China. At that time, Xi Jinping completed further control of power. The Internet persuades entrepreneurs to trust Beijing’s support for private enterprise.
In addition, the report also said that people familiar with the matter said that although Jack Ma has long since resigned as the executive chairman of Alibaba, he is still a member of the Alibaba Partners Committee and still has influence in the company. Therefore, Jack Ma planned Alibaba’s business from overseas. In recent months, he has been on the phone with Alibaba executives, including current chairman and chief executive Zhang Yong, urging them to break up the company.
In the fierce power struggle before the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China in 2021, Xi Jinping began to rectify the financial sector, including a sudden stop on the eve of Ant Group’s listing. Observers believe that behind Ma Yun and Ant Group are the Jiang Zemin family and a large group of other second-generation reds. After that, Ma Yun left overseas and temporarily lived in Japan, keeping a low profile.
Now that Alibaba, which is suspected of hiding a red family behind it, has been dismantled by the authorities, Ma Yun, who has returned to China, may not be able to cause any disturbances except for being a lucky cat and a signboard for the CCP.
Fan Shiping, a professor at Taiwan Normal University’s Institute of Politics, analyzed to CNR that the Chinese government definitely used threats to force Ma Yun to return to China, possibly by threatening his family members and parents. Fan Shiping said that the other party might say, “Do you want one person to die or ten or twenty people to die? You decide for yourself. This kind of thing means that he must tell you that if you don’t come back, the danger is that you can’t do it.” not going back”.
The outside world analyzes that Beijing wants to use Ma Yun’s return to show its friendliness to the business community, hoping to attract private enterprises to return to China. In this regard, Fan Shiping emphasized that the possibility of success is unlikely, because foreign businessmen are also aware of the government’s past practice of “advancing the state and retreating from the people”. Besides, they have also purged Ma Yun and Ma Huateng, and now they are asked to speak for the Communist Party. It may be hard for foreign businessmen to believe it, and China’s economic downturn is caused by the general environment, and it is not at all that Ma Yun alone can solve the change.
In addition, Fan Shiping believes that the Chinese government wanted Ma Yun to go back because he wanted to check the property of Ma Yun and related people. He estimated that it would be difficult for Ma Yun to leave China.
Fan Shiping said: “Then it is impossible to come out… They all rose in the era of Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao. I think he will investigate their assets.”
