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Comment by joejerryronnie | Hacker News Reader

The reason Jack Ma is stepping down from Alibaba is that he was becoming too powerful and influencial in China. Jack is very smart and knows that you can build your wealth and power until you begin to threaten the party, then you either need to step down or you will be forcefully taken down.

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Definitely influential...

I was with a 30-year-old Chinese lady last night. Entrepreneur... I asked who her role models are, and she said "Only one... Jack Ma".

Aim for the stars, hit the moon.

Interesting thought. Can you provide any historical examples of this?

You can look at his existing behavior for clues to that being the case. When he took control of Ant Financial from Alibaba, spinning it off, he gave himself 2/3 of the business. That diluted position would still be worth around $80-$90 billion today. Instead of holding onto that, he proceeded to massively dilute his ownership and control of Ant. The reason he did that, is the same reason he was allowed to take it away from Alibaba without proper compensation (Alibaba was majority owned by multiple foreign shareholders): strategic national interest, an edict from the government. The major banks are all directly state controlled. A very large share of all online transactions in China flow through Ant Financial, the government couldn't allow that to remain in one person's hands. Jack got his orders.

In China as a business person it's extremely dangerous to become too powerful or rich, especially now. Maybe you could have gotten away with it 15 years ago. China of today is very different from China of the late 1990s and 2000s.

If Jack Ma had held onto his original contrived Ant position, he'd nearly be the richest person on earth, with a potential chokehold on finance, industry and retail in China. That position could have plausibly been worth several hundred billion dollars to him personally over time. That's not something you want to aspire to currently in China.

That process began long before Alibaba ran into problems with Xi's people (and it was a petty dispute with lowest tier retainer)

In the East the Political Class holds the power, whereas in the West it's the Business Class that holds the power

Xiao Jianhua, Wang Jian (HNA) are recent examples. When Bo Xilai was purged, Xu Ming, a businessman with very close ties to him, were arrested for bribery, and later died mysteriously in prison. Given the turbulent political scene it could be a good move to distance himself from everything, at least for some time.

When one stands in front of the Many Faced God, all the money they had, even if it were trillions are literally useless. Many may have read about it for a while, but it was only these recent events that makes you truly understand. Why they are willing to paid millions for "services" to move their "millions" out of China and live outside.

Fan Bingbing is another example, and countless others.

And it proves that China, is still no different to how it operate in the Qing dynasty or all dynasty before hundreds to thousands years ago.

But of coz my guess are many of these stories don't get covered by Western Media.

i don't know what kind of coverage you're expecting but in 2016 i've read about missing chinese billioniares on fortune [0] [1]. there are also other coverages: [2] [3] [4]

[0] http://fortune.com/2015/12/11/the-warren-buffett-of-china-di...

[1] http://fortune.com/2016/01/08/china-billionaire-missing/

[2] https://www.cnbc.com/2016/02/01/chinas-missing-ceos-and-bill...

[3] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/china-billi...

[4] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-08-24/asia-casi...

The Dictator's Handbook talks about this in good details. Recommended read, especially in today's world political climate.

Interesting, can you elaborate more specifically on the actions needed to be taken?

tinfoil intensifies

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