Jack Ma Arrested?

Jack Ma, the Founder of Alibaba, was not arrested but rather, an individual with the last name ‘Ma’ was arrested by the Police.

CCTV, China’s state broadcaster, reported Tuesday morning that police in Hangzhou, Alibaba’s home city, have taken “compulsory measures” against an individual with the last name Ma on April 25.

The broadcaster said Ma had been apprehended on charges of using the internet to engage in activities endangering national security.

The initial CCTV report stated that the suspect’s full name had two characters. But the broadcaster later revised that report to reflect a clarification issued by Hangzhou’s police: the arrested individual’s full name has three characters.

That distinction made all the difference. The full name of Jack Ma, whose given name in Chinese is Yun, has only two characters.

Alibaba Group shares crashed in early trading on Tuesday after the false news spread.

Investors, fearing that the individual in question was Alibaba’s billionaire founder Jack Ma, quickly dumped their shares, causing the stock to crash by as much as 9.4%, erasing about $26 billion in value.

The real individual who was arrested is a hardware research director at a Chinese tech company.

Yet the fact that even the possibility that the arrest could be connected to Alibaba’s once-outspoken founder caused shares to tank shows that investors remain on edge about the company’s future—even as Beijing is signaling it intends to ease a two-year crackdown on the nation’s tech sector in response to concerns over slowing growth.

Shares in Alibaba are down 66% from their peak in October 2020. Investors started selling shares after Ma, addressing a high-profile conference for the nation’s most powerful bankers and financial regulators, criticized China’s policymakers for stifling innovation and growth.

Ma, who stepped down as executive chairman of Alibaba in 2019, has not been seen in public since January, when he visited a primary school in Hainan as part of his philanthropic efforts, notes the South China Morning Post, which is owned by Alibaba.