When Beijing mouthpiece People’s Daily released a list of people that the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC) plans to award, it raises billions of eyebrows. There were names like Yao Ming, a retired professional basketball player, and Lang Ping, a former Chinese volleyball player and the current head coach of China women’s national volleyball team.

 

The list – 100 names – are the elite from all walks of life, including entrepreneurs, economists, scientists, astronauts and artists. One name stands out among them because he is the kingdom’s richest man – Jack Ma. Along with Baidu’s Robin Li and Tencent’s Pony Ma, the founder of Alibaba is among the 100 people to be honoured for their “contributions”.

 

Apparently, to mark the 40th anniversary of China’s reform and opening-up, Beijing plans to award the 54-year-old Jack Ma (net worth US$35.8 billion – Forbes) for being the driving force in internet payment and logistics systems mobile payment network, independent research and development of Alibaba Cloud, and Electronic World Trade Platform (eWTP).

The Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC) says – “Under his leadership, Alibaba ranks among the top 10 global companies in terms of market value, making China a leading player in the international e-commerce industry, internet finance and cloud computing, spawning a large number of entrepreneurs and startups.”

 

While Jack Ma’s hard work and rise to become the country’s richest man has never been doubted, his link to the Chinese Communist Party has been questioned repeatedly. Now, the cat is out of the bag. Jack Ma has all along been a member of the Communist Party. In fact, he has been a member since the 1980s, despite the Alibaba mogul previously said that he preferred to stay out of politics.

 

The People’s Daily reveals that billionaire Jack Ma was a party member who has played an important role in pushing China’s OBOR (One Belt, One Road) global trade infrastructure initiative – a pet project of President Xi Jinping. Essentially, not only Mr. Ma is among the world’s richest people, but he has now emerged as a member of another club – China’s 89-million-strong Communist Party.

State-run Chinese media on Tuesday reported that someone claiming to be a former classmate of Jack Ma revealed that they joined the Communist Party while in university – “We all joined the party around the second or third year of university. Back then, joining the party meant not just that you were a good student, but also that you had integrity, organizational ability, enthusiasm and idealism.”

 

This means Jack Ma was already a Communist Party member long before he heard about the Internet, let alone the creation of Alibaba. However, Baidu’s Robin Li and Tencent’s Pony Ma were not listed as Communist Party members. The disclosure could be due to Beijing’s eagerness to prove its legitimacy in the world of capitalism, and Jack Ma provides a great success story.

 

Perhaps the Chinese Communist Party wants to leverage on Jack Ma’s “rock star” status to recruit more people. The disclosure of Mr. Ma’s membership also reflects the thinking that the party controls the economy and society. It’s an open secret that operating as private business can be met with unpredictable and challenging environment.

Therefore, joining the party can be helpful to private businessmen and women in the country as they navigate a complicated business environment where the state-led economy dominates many industries. Some of the richest men in China are party members, including Wang Jianlin (Dalian Wanda Group) and Xu Jiayin of the Evergrande Group, a property developer.

 

Now everything makes perfect sense. After Donald Trump stunningly won the 2016 Presidential Election, Beijing sent Jack Ma to Washington to befriend the President-Elect, offering to create a whopping 1-million jobs in the United States. Of course, by September this year (2018), Mr. Ma no longer plans to create 1-million jobs in the U.S. due to ongoing trade war between the U.S. and China.

 

Emboldened by Trump’s MAGA (Make America Great Again), American businessmen soon started whining and bitching about the unfair competition in China. So, they ran back to President Trump and complained that the Chinese way of doing business was unacceptable – even illegal, unethical and should be condemned. Jack Ma offered his advice – “Stop Whining!!”

Acting like an envoy of the Chinese Communist Party, the tech tycoon was extremely frustrated with Trump’s trade war – warning that the conflict could last as long as 20 years – a remark he made just hours after the Trump administration slapped a new round of tariffs on Chinese goods worth US$200 billion. However, Jack Ma acknowledges that China must open up the domestic market.

 

Last month, despite the general perception that President Trump appeared to be winning the trade war, Jack Ma said the United States will suffer more in the long trade war with China. He said – “I’m very concern that the U.S. will suffer more in the trade war. The trade deficit was a problem accumulated over the past few decades, and it cannot be solved overnight.”

 

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November 28th, 2018 by financetwitter

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