Jack Ma, like other controversial Chinese businessmen, has disappeared

• Yahoo Finance reported that Jack Ma, Chinese billionaire and founder of Alibaba and Ant Group, has not been seen publicly for more than two months.
• Late last year, Chinese regulators launched an antitrust investigation into Alibaba and introduced new regulations that halted Ant Group’s initial public offering.
• Other prominent businessmen, such as retired real estate mogul Ren Zhiqiang and former asset manager Xiao Jianhua, have also disappeared after being criticized by Chinese regulators.
• Visit the Business Insider homepage for more stories.

Chinese billionaire and Alibaba founder Jack Ma has been conspicuously absent from public life.

Yahoo Finance reported on Monday that Ma had not been seen publicly for more than two months. Ma missed a scheduled November TV appearance on a talent show he founded. Another Alibaba executive replaced Ma, and the TV website removed Ma’s photo, Telegraph reported.

His public absence follows Chinese regulators’ antitrust investigation into e-commerce giant Alibaba. Ant Group, Ma’s financial services company, has drawn the ire of Chinese banks for stealing business from them. The country introduced a series of new regulations in November that halted Ant Group’s initial public offering.

Ant Group and Alibaba were not immediately available for comment.

Read more: China’s antitrust investigation into Alibaba could be an opportunity for other cloud players – including Amazon, Microsoft and Google – to step in

Ma reportedly criticized global financial regulators at a conference in Shanghai in late October, calling them a “club of the elderly” ill-suited to overseeing Chinese technological innovation. Duncan Clark, chairman of Beijing-based tech company BDA China, speculated Ma might have been told to “take a step” because of the new rules, Reuters reported.

While Ma may be trying to stay out of public view during the investigation, her notable absence is reminiscent of other Chinese businessmen who disappeared from the public after arguing with regulators.

Ren Zhiqiang, a retired real estate mogul, fell off the radar in March 2020 after criticizing the Communist Party for mismanaging the coronavirus pandemic, The New York Times reported. Beijing then sentenced Ren to 18 years in prison, a potential life sentence for the 69-year-old.

The country has reportedly stopped other public criticisms of China’s response to the pandemic, including law professor Xu Zhangrun and human rights lawyer Zhang Xuezhong.

Chinese police abducted Xiao Jianhua, a former asset manager, from a hotel in Hong Kong in January 2017, Reuters reported. Xiao has since disappeared from detention in China and the country has seized parts of his Tomorrow Group business, the Times reported. Chinese regulators have criticized Xiao and other tycoons for keeping potential investors away from Chinese stock markets, according to The Guardian.

Meng Hongwei, the former head of the International Criminal Police Organization, disappeared from the public in September 2018 while traveling to China from France, according to the BBC.

China sentenced Hongwei to 13 and a half years in prison for corruption in January 2020. But Meng’s wife, who first reported her husband’s disappearance, told the Guardian that she believed her husband was innocent. and that his detention was politically motivated.

“It’s not justice,” Meng’s wife told The Guardian of her husband’s detention. “I think the anti-corruption campaign in China has already been damaged. It has become a way of attacking people who are your enemy.”