Taking his war against the billionaire empire of Jack Mas to a new level, the Chinese government has asked the majority of Alibaba to get rid of their media assets.
According to a report by The Wall Street Journal citing those familiar with the matter, Chinese officials are “more concerned about how a technology giant is influencing public opinion in the country”.
Alibaba expanded its footprint in the media sector by acquiring the South China Morning Post, an English-language newspaper that launched 118 years ago in Hong Kong.
The company also has a strong grip on the media on mainland China, including 36Kr tech news site, state-owned Shanghai Media Group, stakes in the Twitter-like Weibo platform and several news outlets. digital and Chinese print.
“Alibaba has also established joint ventures or partnerships with powerful state-run media such as Xinhua News Agency and local government-run newspaper organizations in Zhejiang and Sichuan provinces,” the report said Monday. .
Angry at public criticism If Chinese financial regulators last year slammed the first public offering (IPO) of its fintech giant Ant Group.
China’s leading market watchdog has launched an investigation into anti-competitive practices accused by e-commerce giant Alibaba and has also unveiled a “corrective plan” for the fintech Ma initiative.
The agenda was that Ant Group should return to the roots in payments and bring more clarity to transactions.
Ma later disappeared from public view, including profiteering that he was “going missing”. He was only seen in January when a video of him appeared on Chinese social media.
According to a WSJ report, Chinese regulators are “appalled at the growth of Alibaba’s broad media interests and have called on the company to come up with a plan to severely restrict its media,” the people said.
“The government has not specified what funds need to be loaded”.
Alibaba had not yet responded to the report.
Alibaba’s market value of more than $ 8 billion in publicly listed companies.
“That includes a share of about $ 3.5 billion in Weibo Corp. and a bet of nearly $ 2.6 billion in Bilibili Inc., a video platform that is popular among Chinese young people,” he said. the reference report.
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(Only the headline and image of this report may have been reworked by Industry Status staff; the rest of the content is automatically generated from syndicated feeds.)
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