Jack Ma Emerges for First Time Since Crackdown on Ant, Alibaba | Hacker News Reader

Jack Ma Emerges for First Time Since Crackdown on Ant, Alibaba

bloomberg.com

39 pointsuptown8 comments

This entire saga is both typical and odd in that it has elements of truth that have been exaggerated by all sides involved.

It's typical in that high level leaders in China that don't follow the party line just-quite-closely-enough risk major consequences. It's also typical that in order to get to such a level of influence, a high level leader in China clearly understands the stakes and proposition at hand. It's further also clear that given the lack of meaningful options, any such leader would be forced to stay within the boundaries.

What's odd about this is that Jack Ma clearly must understand the consequences of what he said to regulators that day [1]. It's also odd that he misjudged their response so drastically. He clearly didn't spend all of this time building the empire that is Ant without having regularly seeing reactions from individuals of this body and even more powerful figures.

That a lot of Ant's fundamentals in financial health were questionable isn't really widely disputed as far as I can tell. The stated goals were optimistic but admirable as well: give loans to literally the guy on the street that needs it most and use data to figure out if you made the wrong choice en masse.

But regulators appeared to be onboard right up until this public moment. So why now? What was at stake when all appeared to be smooth sailing already?

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ULORUT2Ckw4

> But regulators appeared to be onboard right up until this public moment.

Maybe that was only on the public side and he knew something was going to happen before it did, hence the speech. Maybe we have cause and effect backwards here.

Perhaps not the response you are looking for but:

Humans are fickle creatures because of mortality. Ernest Becker has written how our inevitable death has a significant impact on our culture and behavior.

Chemicals also have a significant impact. Not drugs or narcotics specifically since a psychedelic experience can be had naturally. In fact, age often changes a person markedly.

We have no idea what was going on in Ma's life that may have caused him to do something 'not Ma.'

It's simple to say he did something maladaptive, as the effect wouldn't be something one would desire, if just acting from a business standpoint.

But from the standpoint of a consciousness that will eventually die, maybe he just did something that brought him closer to the will of his soul.

Well that sounds spooky af

Thanks, that means it accomplished the 'will of my soul' ;-)

There's more discussion here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25842855

Well at least he's alive. I was a bit worried that he'd gotten whacked by the CCP.

This article doesn't mention the part where Ma criticized regulators in a speech during IPO prep before it was called off [1]. According to the FT (sorry, paywalled), this is quite out of character for him and upset both investors and regulators quite a bit. FT suggested that the reaction to that speech was the reason he stepped out of the light for a while and not necessarily the regulatory investigation as implied by this Bloomberg article.

https://edition.cnn.com/2021/01/06/tech/jack-ma-china-tech-i...

EDIT: Another HN thread with a better article: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25842855

Reply on news.ycombinator.com