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would have made Jack Ma one of the most powerful people on Earth, placing a staggering degree of leverage over China’s economy into his hands. And here he was in Shanghai, talking about wanting to slash financial regulations and expand the use of cryptocurrencies and risky forms of credit (which he personally would profit from). So of course China cracked down on him. It wasn’t a question of suppressing his personal opinions, it was part of a concerted antitrust campaign—one that would soon hit the Alibaba Group with a historic $2.8 billion anti-monopoly fine, force it to break into six different “units” with their own CEOs, and force the Ant Group to break Alipay’s loans function off into a separate business. As Tech Buzz China journalist Rui Ma (no relation) writes, “The real question is how [Alipay] was allowed to get so powerful in the first place.”
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