Chinese billionaire Wang C was summoned to the government of the country after his post on social networks caused excitement on the stock exchange, Bloomberg writes. The publications suspected an implicit criticism to the authorities that the investors scared. As a result, Beijing pressed on a billionaire, demanding to avoid publicity.
The reason for the scandal was an ancient poem that Wang C, the head of the country’s largest meal delivery company, posted in its account in Weibo, the Chinese counterpart Twitter. In the text of a thousand years ago it is said about how the first emperor of China burned the books of dissenters with him.
Publication appeared at the beginning of May, and after this shares of Meituan cheaper cheaper. Soon Wang C deleted the post and explained that he wanted to criticize the unintended competitors, but it did not stop the company’s shares worth $ 26 billion.
After the incident, Wang C is trying not to attract attention and no longer wrote anything else in social networks, although he used to do it at least once a week.
Meituan – the second value of the company in China. In its attitude, before the scandalous post was the beginning of an antitrust investigation, which can cost the company more than $ 700 million fine.
Market participants The situation with the poem reminded last year’s story with the founder of Alibaba Jack Ma, whose criticism addressed to Beijing led to an unprecedented pressure on the Chinese Internet sector. Alibaba also encountered an investigation into the antimonopoly authority and was fined to record 2.8 billion dollars due to abuse of the market position.
The conflict between the founder of Alibaba Jack Ma and the authorities began in 2020 after he criticized the government policy in the field of digital technologies. After that, the authorities have blocked the entry to the Bank of the subsidiary financial company ANT GROUP. In June, information about the possible armistice in the confrontation of the entrepreneur and the government, the authorities were given by Ant Group to manage the consumer financial company.