China's renowned billionaires pull out from Weibo, restrict posts amid govt fear: Reports

China’s renowned billionaires are opting to leave the country’s social media platform, Weibo and only made content from the last six months visible, as per local media reports. These prominent Chinese billionaires include Lenovo group founder Liu Chuanzhi, and the President of 'Didi Chuxing', Liu Qing. Weibo is widely used in China as an alternative to Twitter and is also a microblogging platform. 

Reportedly, it has been discovered that several other well-known tycoons have also suddenly emptied their Weibo accounts including Zhang Yiming, founder of ByteDance, and Wang Xing, founder of Meituan. The unprecedented move by several personalities in China has triggered speculations on the Chinese social media that the big tech entrepreneurs are scared of something. 

Citing a media report, ANI stated that Weibo as well as other social media were considered good Public Relations (PR) channels and big tech giant owners have been using social media to talk about their future development plans on these websites. Now, suddenly, the Chinese billionaires have given up social media platforms perhaps because they realised it was a sensitive time and is dangerous to speak publicly.

Chinese authorities take measures against certain ‘Ma’

Channel CCTV reported on Tuesday that the Hangzhou State Security Bureau took criminal measures against certain “Ma” and then detained him. The said individual was suspected of using the internet to engage in activities such as inciting secession, inciting subversion of state power and even endangering national security. 

The report was rapidly linked to Alibaba Group founder Jack Ma considering that the headquarters of both Alibaba Group and Ant Group is in Hangzhou. Additionally, Ant Group was caught in a range of controversies. Even the IPO of Ant Group was blocked by the authorities. Hence, people were quick to believe that the Hangzhou case is related to “Jack Ma, aka Ma Yun” and the news started trending on Weibo.  

However, the event reported by CCTV actually took place on April 25 and was reported more than a week later with vague language and lacking details. The newsbreak led to a steep drop in Alibaba’s stock price in Hong Kong which fell by around 9.4%. Other people, as per the report, even believe that it was a deliberate move by the Chinese Communist Party (CPC) to warn Jack Ma, whose Alibaba, Taobao, Ant Financial and other companies hold the personal information of hundreds of millions of Chinese citizens. 

Image: Representative