Xi’s rehabilitation of Jack Ma may be the most lucrative ever

CHINA’S Communist Party has a history of purging, then welcoming back senior officials. Deng Xiaoping was purged three times before he led the country out of Maoism in the late 1970s. Some cadres are welcomed back years after their death. Jack Ma, Alibaba’s founder, received the modern version of a purge in 2020. The initial public offering (IPO) of his fintech company, Ant Group, was cancelled. Alibaba was probed and handed a record fine. Ma withdrew from public life.

Now, however, he seems welcome once again. On Feb 17, Ma and a handful of other entrepreneurs met at a symposium in Beijing with Xi Jinping, China’s supreme leader. Many see this as Ma’s rescue from the wilderness – and a sign that, after a prolonged crackdown, private-sector tech is back in favour.

It certainly has the makings of the most lucrative rehabilitation of all time. On Feb 14, Alibaba’s share price rose by 6.2 per cent on rumours of the symposium, adding about US$18 billion to its market value. Those of Tencent and Xiaomi, two other tech firms, rose by 7 per cent. That comes on top of a rally in recent weeks. Shares in Hang Seng Tech, an index of the 30 largest technology companies listed in Hong Kong, have risen by 23 per cent in the past month; those in Alibaba have surged by over 50 per cent. Is a revival in private-sector sentiment at last underway?