Ma Yun, Weibo also took their hands off… A picture 7 years ago that announced the departure

“How long can Ma Yun, 57, the newest’China’s richest man,’ who has been crowned by 20 Princes’ families and Wall Street crocodiles, stay on the throne?”

This is the last verse of Ma Yun, Prince Dang and Wall Street (2014) published by Ming Jing Mang, a server in the United States, immediately after Alibaba, a Chinese internet company listed on the New York Stock Exchange, on September 19, 2014.

Like Ming-jing’s prophecy, Ma Yun stepped down from the chairman of the Alibaba board, which he founded in 2019. In October of last year, it failed to list Ant Financial. After that, Ma Yun disappeared from the public’s view.

Ma’s lonely exit was already announced in Seoul seven years ago. On July 4, 2014, Chinese President Xi Jinping (68), a state guest visited Korea, attended the’Korea-China Economic and Trade Cooperation Forum’ held at the Korea Chamber of Commerce and Industry. The Chinese economic delegation led by President Xi Jinping and the heads of Korean companies took commemorative photos (photo). After filming, the delegation from China was surprised to receive the photo from the Secretary of State’s office, Ming-jing reported. Two Chinese entrepreneurs were erased by Photoshop. A commemorative photo was also posted on the Chinese network operated by the press office of the Chinese State Council (government) public relations office. The description of the photo was written like this. “Local time On July 4, 2014 in Seoul, South Korea, President Park Geun-hye shook hands with Chinese entrepreneurs at the Korea-China Economic and Trade Cooperation Forum held at the Shilla Hotel. Together with President Xi Jinping, the forum will include Baidu Chairman Li Yanhong, Alibaba Chairman Ma Yun, Bank of China Chairman Tian Guoli, Huawei President Ren Jungfei, Southern Airlines Chairman Si Xianmin, and Wang Xiao Chinese Telegraph Chairman Chu and others attended.” However, in the photo, the figures of Chairman Ma Yun and Li Yan-hong were not trimmed. This is the scene that foretold Ma Yun’s fall.

Ma Yun was born in Hangzhou in 1964. His parents were actors of Pyeong-tan, a Chinese pansori character. It is said that his father was a violent character. Always beat Marwin. Ma, too, loved fighting as a child. I was always punished at school. He said that he had sewn 13 stitches. I liked English. I practiced conversation with foreigners by cycling around the lobby of the Hangzhou Hotel. He made his name as a foreign guide. It is said that his father’s beatings also motivated him to learn English. “When my father swears, I got it back in English. It’s because I can’t understand it.” Excluding English, grades were at the level of failing. I took the high school entrance exam twice. Mathematics received 31 and 21 points, respectively. I went to a third class high school.
In 1982, he first challenged Gaokao (a Chinese university entrance examination) and took the Beijing University exam, but of course he fell. He applied for a hotel employee recruitment with his younger brother, but was rejected because of his appearance. Eventually, I found a job at a publishing company to receive documents by introducing an acquaintance. The following year, I challenged the college again, but I fell again. For the third time at the age of 20, I took the foreign language department at Hangzhou Normal University. Fortunately, the number of candidates for the foreign language department was insufficient, so Ma Yun became a university student. He was also elected as the president of the university student council and the chairman of the Hangzhou student association by showing his English skills that he had learned in the hotel lobby when he was in college.
In 1992, Ma-win challenged his first start-up. He founded a translation company called Haibo, which has a similar pronunciation in Chinese to the English word Hope. It contains the hope of becoming rich. At the time, there were not a few foreign companies in Hangzhou, but it was the first translation company in Hangzhou, which had no translation company. Three years later, the company turned to a surplus in 1995. When the business is successful, Ma-win turns to a new field. It’s the Internet.
Marwin meets the Internet on his first trip to the United States in 1995. His trip to the United States was a coincidence. At the time, an American investment company took part in the construction of a road in Fuyang City in the eastern part of Anhui Province. The local government, which had not signed a formal contract, sent English-speaking Ma Yun to the United States to sign the contract. Upon arriving in the United States, Marwin discovered that the company to sign the contract was a mafia organization. Ma Yun, who managed to run away, visited the office of an American acquaintance she had learned while working as an English guide in Hangzhou. I first saw the Internet here. Ma Yun confirmed in 1995 that little Chinese information was available on the Internet. I sensed that this gap was an opportunity.

Upon returning to Korea, I created a website for a translation company. In less than three hours of opening, I received four e-mails. It also opened an information classification site called’China Yellow Page’. After two years of founding, it achieved a net profit of 5 million yuan (870 million won).
Based on this, on February 21, 1999, Alibaba was founded with 17 business partners. It is the beginning of a 15-year journey to listing on the NASDAQ in New York in 2014. Having retired 20 years after the founding of Alibaba, he was denied a global village with a fortune of 47 trillion won (including his family). He was a self-made IT myth in socialist China, and an icon of success, called ‘rebirth’.

On October 22 last year, Ma Yun attended the Bund Financial Summit held in Shanghai. At this point, it was said that due to the failure of the Battle of the Red Cliffs, China was unable to conceive of building a large-scale warship for more than 1000 years. “Doing risk-free innovation itself is an act of annihilating innovation,” he criticized the regulations of Chinese financial authorities. The results were disastrous.

On November 2, the Chinese financial authorities summoned Ant Group executives, including Ma Yun, chairman Jing Xian-dong and governor Hu Xiao-ming. This’interview’, attended by the People’s Bank of China, the Securities Supervisory Commission, the Bank Administration and Supervisory Commission, and the Foreign Exchange Administration Bureau, is a Chinese-style corporate disciplinary method.

After that, Ma Yun disappeared from the public’s view. Various rumors were spreading, including the rumors of exile in Singapore. On January 20th, after 88 days of’disappearance’, Ma Yun appeared in a video message at an event in which teachers of rural schools nationwide participated. “Let’s meet again after Corona 19 has passed.” Marwin’s voice was lifeless.

According to the British Financial Times (FT), Mawon’s Gulfstream aircraft traveled all over China about once every three days, just before the Shanghai Financial Summit. The record of such operations has decreased to about once a week as of October. The day after his speech in Shanghai, Ma Yun’s plane headed for Beijing. Stayed for four days. When regulators summoned executives, including Ma Yun, on the 2nd, Ma Yun’s private plane was in a hangar at the Beijing airport for two weeks. When Ant announced its own restructuring plan at the end of January, Ma Yun’s private plane was confirmed in Beijing.

Except for Beijing, only Shanghai, Hangzhou, Kunming and Sanya, the resort city of Hainan Island, went to and from. FT analyzed that the movement of Marwin was limited to golf and reporting. Fang Zhouzi, a renowned Chinese science writer and influencer, self-helped on Twitter, saying, “The best Chinese aren’t anything in front of Guan.”

The fall of the Chinese IT myth didn’t stop there. Authorities tried to step on Ma’s resurgence. The Wall Street Journal of the United States (WSJ) revealed on the 15th that Chinese regulators have requested the disposal of shares in a media company owned by Ma. It is worth 8 billion dollars (9.5 trillion won). Ma Yun owns a 100% stake in South China Morning Post (SCMP), the largest English newspaper in China, as well as a 30% stake in Weibo, a Chinese version of Twitter. In addition, Alibaba owns a 6.7% stake in YouTube, a Chinese version of YouTube, and Billibili, a short video platform worth 3 trillion won.

WSJ cited sources and said that the Chinese authorities, which checked Alibaba’s stake in the media, confirmed Alibaba’s influence and were embarrassed.
In the early 20th century, Chinese literary writer Lu Xun shouted, “If you don’t hit a drowned dog, it will be bitten by a dog.” In China, he argues that fair play is a luxury. Ma Yun’s downfall shows that Lu Xun’s remarks are still valid in China.

Beijing = correspondent Shin Kyungjin [email protected]