Alibaba founder Jack Ma, pictured here at a 2010 forum, has been caught in the middle of a new slew of fintech reforms in China. His inflammatory speech in October 2020 may have been just the excuse the government needed. Credit: World Economic Forum/Qilai Shen, Creative Commons
HONG KONG – Ever since Alibaba founder Jack Ma criticized Chinese financial regulation in a speech last October, a regulatory storm has pummeled the country’s entire online financial and consumer sector. The Shanghai Stock Exchange suspended the planned initial public offering of fintech conglomerate Ant Group — an Alibaba affiliate — just two days before its launch, and regulators subsequently launched a massive crackdown on Chinese Big Tech. While Ma’s speech appears to have been an unforeseeable random event, the logic of Chinese bureaucratic politics made Ant’s IPO debacle inevitable.
As I elaborate in my new book, power within the Chinese bureaucracy is fragmented among central ministries and levels of government. A department’s mission and objectives determine its stance and approach toward regulating businesses.
China previously regulated its financial system using a “one bank and three commissions” structure. The People’s Bank of China (PBOC, the
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