Why do Chinese Billionaires Keep Disappearing?

this is miles kwok an exiled chinese billionaire who at the peak of his career was a 73rd richest person in china and this is what he had to say about jack ma almost exactly two years before he disappeared i think him is only two way all the china has a billionaire only two way i always call one year only two things happen jail jail and that's dead he's either going to jail or he's going to be killed i just think of food or you might just fall off a wall yes or you might just fall off the wall and die when we jail another we kill you everybody seems a resource no doubt that is a that is a prediction that our audience is going to also have a very hard time with you know what i have a hard time with the fact that i loved eating cereal as a kid until i found out just how much sugar and artificial stuff they pack into it so if you're like me you have big goals in life in business and in health you need to be at your peak performance at all times but you enjoy the smaller things in life like a delicious bowl of cereal as a midnight snack that is where magic spoon comes in healthy cereal that tastes literally too good to be true it is the only cereal i eat because it has 11 grams of protein low carbs and it's just as addicting and satisfying as the big food brands you had as a kid oh my god that's good my favorite flavors are cocoa chocolate fruity loops of fruit and of course my beloved cinnamon and you badass viewers have been loving it too you can get all those flavors and more with their build your own box feature get five dollars off for a limited time by going to magicspoon.comtran with code jake tran with the link below they have a risk-free 100 happiness guarantee so you can get your money back if you're not satisfied so get your five dollars off with the link below [Music] december 10 2015 also known as the warren buffett of china disappears we do not know what is happening in his case he truly has vanished according to zai shin magazine well founded the fosun group a mega conglomerate an investment company with over a hundred billion dollars in assets their portfolio includes big pharma in china and india insurance companies hospital chains in portugal the atlantis resort national banks and even a 25 stake in circuit day soleil and in 2020 their main subsidiary fosan international ranked number 371 on the forbes global 2000 list making him the 17th richest man in china in 2015 and yet on december 10 2015 gwao dropped off the face of the earth infosound executives reported that they lost contact with their boss day 2 fosun group's house trading on both the hong kong and shanghai stock exchange pending the release of an announcement containing inside information the company said that gua was assisting in certain investigations carried out by mainland judicial authorities the company also mentioned that they were in contact with wow just through appropriate channels day three or four fulson group held a conference call where one of the shareholders asked if that meant they were talking to go out directly or through an intermediary possibly a government intermediary the question was left unanswered january 7 2016 almost exactly a month after guavas disappeared sent shockwaves through the chinese business community cho ching zhang billionaire fashion entrepreneur also disappears joe has a classic rags to riches story but in this case the rags part is quite literal he tried his hand at carpentry bricklaying and finally as a tailor he got his savings confiscated by the government at 14 basically going bankrupt and eventually ciao founded one of china's best known fashion brands metho's boneway which targets college students and grads with a cheaper alternative to brands like h m and zara making him the 62nd richest man in china in 2015 and much like the last guy on january 7 2016 the company said they were unable to reach him or the secretary of the board they halted their training on the shenzhen stock exchange and reports came out that chao was picked up by police [Music] january 2017 billionaire financer xiao jianwa who has ties to the xi jinping family gets rolled away in a wheelchair with his head covered by five or six unmarked chinese public security agents he was not known to use a wheelchair xiao controls the tomorrow group a holdings company with interest insurance companies banks and real estate developers at the time his net worth was six billion dollars paranoid about other billionaires that went missing xiao and other chinese tycoons got out of the mainland and hidden hotels like the four seasons in hong kong where these tycoons were believed to have rented out entire floors at six to twenty six thousand dollars per month and at 1am on the eve of chinese new year's five or six agents of china's equivalent to the cia abducted them to the mainland later xiao called his family to tell him he was taken to the mainland but that he was fine his company posted on social media that he was just over there for medical treatment and that he would return soon and he posted on social media denying that he was abducted and how he was innocent that post was later deleted this mo of getting abducted then telling the world i'm fine nothing to see here is pretty common among chinese business people march 2020 real estate mogul ran chi-chong posted a brutal essay online hating on the great leader in the chinese communist party's handling of the virus it included baseless insults like if there was freedom of speech citizens would take active measures to protect themselves or when shameless and ignorant people attempt to resign themselves to the stupidity of the great leader society becomes a mob that's hard to develop and sustain and plenty of other anti-communists rhetoric that have no basis in reality so starting on march 12th ren was understandably never heard from again and his weibo account which had 37 million followers is now deleted now out of these four billionaires that went away how many do you think came back two two came back one was sentenced to prison another one never reappeared in the public eye the real estate mogul who caught the president a clown in that essay was missing for seven months and in september 2020 he magically reappeared to be sentenced to 18 years in prison the charge corruption of course taking bribes and abusing his power among other things in which he conveniently confessed to all his crimes in a voluntary and truthful manner his assets were also seized and he was fined 4.2 million yuan billionaire financier xiao the guy that was wheeled away on a wheelchair his fate is not very clear because since his abduction way back in january 2017 his whereabouts are still unknown and he hasn't reappeared in the public eye and the government recently started dismantling his financial empire by seizing hundreds of billions worth of his companies and assets so things are not looking good for show for the ones that did make it back into society the warren buffett of china and the fashion entrepreneur both never spoke a word about their leave of absence and acted as if nothing happened these are just four examples we're not even including all the lesser known people that have disappeared journalists publishers activists smaller millionaires and of course the latest example being jack ma october 24th 2020 jack ma delivers a speech at the bun finance summit in shanghai since then you guessed it he's nowhere to be found with the only clue to his worry about being a three paragraph article from cnbc stating that the billionaire is not missing instead ma has been lying low for the time being according to a person familiar with the matter but general robert spalding doesn't buy it he's the author of the book stealth war china's silent takeover while america's elite slept so it is likely that he meant the same fate as other billionaires have in in that he was basically he ran afoul of the party and he's probably most likely in some form of house arrest somewhere within china where he he's no longer allowed to to leave the confines of his living space so a report came out recently that there was a rumor that he was laying low but you think it's more likely house arrest well he could be laying low but it seems awfully improbable that he would cease all you know appearances in public voluntarily i mean he is one of the richest guys in china he's also well respected as an entrepreneur an innovator um so the idea that he would just stop all of a sudden being public possible but it is more likely that he you know met the fate of many other billionaires under xi jinping which is he was he was forced into some kind of um lockdown after all as you know this pattern of disappearing then telling people you're okay when you're not is what we've seen in previous examples [Music] obviously due to the pandemic this is on a video link so we're not still clear exactly where the founder of alibaba is but it is the first sighting since early november now one would think jack speech must have been pretty spicy pretty brutal against the ccp but if you read the translation it's not that bad one might even call it pretty reasonable he eases in by saying that these are just the non-professional views of a non-professional person and that his opinions may be immature incorrect or laughable with the main message being that for the sake of china for the prosperity of china china and the world needs a new financial system and that china's current banking system operates with a pawn shop mentality that chinese regulators are outdated that we cannot use the way to manage a railway station to manage an airport and he hinted at how xi jinping isn't bearing the responsibility of innovation and the mistakes that come with it so definitely not the most politically smart move by jack ma but also nowhere near the real estate mogul calling xi jinping a clown calling for horrible things like freedom of speech and it's also nowhere near the level of criticism business leaders in america say about their government on a regular basis this is like if jeff bezos or elon musk went missing after criticizing the us government so the question remains why do chinese billionaires keep disappearing during the mid 1900s there was no such thing as private businesses or private enterprise in china it was pure communism there was no private enterprise allowed whatsoever in fact they had like collective communes really for people you know essentially shared labor to grow their crops the problem was those plops kept dying from starvation and poor central planning and over the time that mao sedona was in charge millions of people tens of millions of people died in china because of the economy's inability to create enough sustenance for the people after the main leader mao zedong died his successor started allowing a little capitalism into the mix while still maintaining absolute control it doesn't matter if the cat is white or black as long as it catches mice so this allowed some limited private sector activity within the chinese economy and what started out as a little private enterprise has slowly grown into what china is today which is kind of this mix of authoritarianism and capitalism but capitalism that's very much constrained by the things that the chinese communist party wants why because our great leaders realize that if we don't feed our people if we don't give them some prosperity they're going to keep starving to death revolt or the world will condemn us and not take us seriously or trade with us and we won't be able to keep up with the rest of the world either way complete suffering threatens our rule which is obviously the only thing that matters since pure communism doesn't seem to be working it's in our best interest to allow our subjects to create businesses to create jobs to cultivate resources as long as they don't threaten our power the way that the chinese communist party system works is they want to give you some amount of freedom because that unlocks economic activity you know your pursuit of wealth as an individual actually is the force that deng xiaoping unleashed the problem with giving some economic freedom is that your subjects might take it a little bit too far they might get a little too ambitious so if they end up threatening your power that is when the sickle comes down now what comes with opening up and giving people a little bit of freedom as they begin to take that freedom farther than the chinese communist party is willing to allow and that's exactly what happened to billionaires like jack ma under xi jinping what's happened is a lot of these reforms that that began under deng xiaoping continued under zhang zaman slowly began to be unraveled under hujin tao have really just sharply unraveled under xi jinping and that has resulted in the chinese communist party taking a much more direct control over businesses one of the things that's happening to a lot of these previously you know very wealthy business owners and and like jack ma former ceos is that xi jinping is cracking down on all of them and when he made that statement he basically made himself an enemy of the of the chinese communist party so if this is the case if you're an aspiring entrepreneur in china why would you want to start business if you know that the ccp can take away everything in a moment's notice and make you disappear what is the motivation [Music] it's the same motivation for places like the us in the meantime those entrepreneurs are ritually rewarded by having preferential treatment from the government in terms of rules and regulations but also access to capital and the motivation is i can get really really wealthy and maybe i can get really really wealthy i can establish a nest egg outside the country and maybe i can actually leave the country as many have they've moved their assets out they've gotten rich and then they they've escaped i know what the rules are i would never go against the party that would be a suicidal move that would never happen to me i'm not doing anything wrong the irs and fbi would never come after me look at all these successful business people that are on the good side of the party they're living the life and so in the case of these entrepreneurs innovators these ceos these tech ceos it is likely that they're aware of the challenges uh you know to to countering the chinese communist party but you know it's one of those things well it's never going to happen to me yeah it happened to somebody else but you know it's not going to happen to me because i'm not going to do something that you know gets me in trouble the problem with this line of thinking is when you get super big and eventually break the laws of power without even realizing it the moment you threaten the rule the moment you outshine them the moment you have just a little bit too much influence over your fans they're gonna have their sights on you you know the the party if they recognize somebody as having more public exposure than say the political leaders in the case of jack ma he was very very popular he had a big following he was a very successful businessman you know as that stature becomes something that could become a political problem for the chinese communist party it is the case that you might do things exactly like like you were doing before in other words you're not saying anything different or doing every anything different it's just that the party has come to see you as an adversary to the party and so you may think it's not going to happen to me because i ain't know where the limits are and i'm not going to cross that boundary but what happens is a party if the party begins to see you as a threat the the limits change and they may change in a way that's imperceptible to you that you may not even be aware of so you may not do anything different than what you did before but the party has viewed you as an adversary and then you do something that kind of triggers that reactiveness and then the party will come after you and so it is likely that um these these people aren't trying to get themselves in trouble because they understand the power that the kind chinese communist party has over the country it is just that the party has changed its view regarding them and if you're the type of person that isn't politically attuned if you make it to the top you are going to get screwed certainly under xi jinping you know any business leader now needs to be strictly strictly thinking about the party and how they promote the party and how they're loyal to the party now that is not something that these entrepreneurs like jack ma have been used to they've been used to be having more freedom to go out and build their business that's not the china that exists today and even if you do make your money and get out of china your fate is still uncertain what china has been doing and the car in the chinese communist party has been using the ministry of state security which is their equivalent of the cia to go around the world and try to abduct these people and bring them back to china and they've been very successful at doing that so i heard it happened to one guy in hong kong where he was abducted and taken back so it happens all over the world too not just hong kong even in the united states in fact it was happening regularly during the obama administration that the ministry of state security was essentially going throughout the united states and you know basically taking chinese back to china wow that's crazy it is crazy and scary all right guys here's the situation so i just got back from jiu jitsu like a few hours ago pretty exhausted as you can tell by like some of the scars and scratches and bruises i have all over me but pretty exhausted don't really feel like making food and i haven't really eaten much today uh calorie restriction and all that great stuff so if i were to get all the protein i need for today i would have to stuff my face right now which i don't really want to do so magic spoon comes in so we have cinnamon here awesome smells like cinnamon cinnamon is one of my favorite flavors in general and like whatever food like desserts and stuff so very happy to have this one and i love the uh the popular cinnamon cereal that everyone knows about like toast cinnamon crunch or whatever as always some nice serial asmr for you guys oh my god that's good one more general robert spalding he is the guy that you saw sprinkled though at this video and he is also an extremely sharp guy that i have a ton of respect for and he wrote the book stealth war china silent takeover while america's elite slept and if you want to know about like pretty much the most important geopolitical situation we have going on in the world right now us versus china and get a really good understanding of what people are going to look back to as a very important point in history i highly highly recommend this book really easy read extremely important read and a very hard book to put down that will be linked in the video description general spalding also has his own youtube channel where he goes over china-related news and his analysis of it so that'll be linked down below for you guys to check out as well while you guys are down there if you are new to this channel and you're not subscribed already what are you doing because we make video essays just like this one every single week for free on this channel so make sure you subscribe with the button below alright one last shameless plug for you guys i am so close to not being pleb anymore on instagram you guys got to help me get to 10 000 followers on instagram so that will be linked below for you guys to check out we post memes me complaining about stuff cool quotes i come across in my research that you're not going to hear anywhere else behind the scenes stuff day in the life kind of stuff it's really fun help me not be of love anymore we're so close that is going to wrap it up for this video you guys thank you so much for watching oh yeah if you want to support this channel financially magic spoon magic spoon you guys can check this out with the link below five dollars off that is actually gonna wrap it up for today's video thank you so much for watching stay dangerous out there and i will see you guys in the next one [Music] you

Channel: Jake Tran

Views: 1,275,890

Rating: 4.8455958 out of 5

Keywords: jack ma, news, china, stock market, stocks, jack ma missing, where is jack ma, jack ma speech, jack ma motivation, jack ma disappearance, jack ma motivational speech, jack ma news, e commerce, guo guangchang, cnbc news, billionaire lifestyle, zhou chengjian, xiao jianhua, hong kong news, ren zhiqiang, china economy, supply chain management, adv china, tiktok, living in china, chinese politics, ccp, xi jinping, capitalism, stock, motivational speech, startup, entrepreneur vlog

Id: qyMsrgI7-_s

Length: 21min 47sec (1307 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 20 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/theaspiringchimp]

As fucked up as this all is, I’m sorta glad Xi is nationalizing everything and handicapping his own economy... then there may be more internal pressure for political liberalization long term.

[u/sean_incali]

Why

they didn't make their payments