Jack Ma’s $7 Billion Loss Is China’s, Too. And A Growing One

Jack Ma’s $7 Billion Loss Is China’s, Too. And A Growing One

Jack Ma gives a speech at the 'Ma Yun Rural Teachers and Headmasters Prize' on January 7, 2020 in ... [+] Sanya , Hainan province, China.



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If China's 2020 were a person it would be Jack Ma.

Asia's biggest economy started the year with huge ambitions to buttress its technological clout. Ma's ginormous Ant Group initial public offering was at the center of that marketing campaign. It was to be history's biggest IPO. And Ma's journey from Hangzhou English teacher to China's Jeff Bezos personified the meritocratic future China's leaders are said to be plotting.

Ant wasn't listing in New York, where Ma's Alibaba Group went public in 2014. The dual listing in Shanghai and Hong Kong signaled China Inc.'s dominance.

To punctuate the point: the listing was to coincide with Nov. 3, the day of the U.S. election. It would've been quite a way to troll Donald Trump, who lost the U.S. presidency to Joe Biden that day. Ma and Trump, after all, have a bit of history.



In January 2017, 10 days before Trump moved to the White House, Ma made a very public visit to Trump Tower