Chinese billionaire Jack Ma’s secretive visit to Lahore with seven businessmen has got Pakistani media and tycoons into a tizzy. Unconfirmed speculations suggest that Ma’s visit might be aimed at exploring business opportunities in the country, though Ma maintained that the visit was personal.
The Alibaba Group co-founder landed in Lahore on a chartered jet on 29 June but met with no government officials or the media, fuelling a slew of speculation, conspiracy theories, and hope for Pakistan’s struggling start-up ecosystem.
Pakistan’s former state minister and chief of the Board of Investment (BOI), Muhammad Azfar Ahsan, who took credit for breaking the news on Twitter, shared photos of his visit in a tweet. “Ma being a heralded tech entrepreneur brings hope for future business ventures in #Pakistan,” he tweeted.
Why are rumour mills abuzz?
Grapevine has it that Ma’s visit may be related to business operations in Pakistan. The e-commerce giant Daraz, which Alibaba Group acquired in 2018, operates in several South Asian nations, including Pakistan, Myanmar, Nepal, Sri Lanka, and Bangladesh. The e-commerce platform has been going through a rough patch for some time — in February 2023, it reduced its workforce by 11 per cent.
According to Waqas Ghani Kukaswadia, an analyst at investment banking firm JS Global, the presence of international investors shows a global interest in Pakistan’s potential for commerce and business. His visit to Pakistan is regarded as a positive indication, and P@SHA, Chairman, Zohaib Khan even said that Ma’s visit enhanced the “country’s reputation from a tourist standpoint”.
Ma’s visit was widely discussed on Pakistani social media, with Twitter users getting creative and making memes out of him.
Haters will not agree but Jack Ma landed in Pakistan only to meet Pakistan’s supreme leader Asim Munir 🫡🫡 pic.twitter.com/S19Y1HQMd9
— Asad (@A_sadkermit) July 2, 2023
No China-Pakistan bond
Many commentators expressed that Ma’s visit was a reflection of the strong ties between Pakistan and China. But that seems unlikely — there was no official fanfare and the Chinese embassy in Pakistan was reportedly in the dark about Ma’s plans. Apart from these facts, Ma has been a critic of the Chinese government — the business magnate ‘disappeared’ before resurfacing in March 2023 at a school in Hangzhou.
The billionaire entrepreneur arrived in Lahore after a whirlwind tour of Dhaka in Bangladesh and Kathmandu in Nepal. He was accompanied by five Chinese nationals, one Danish and a US citizen.
In Lahore, Ma stayed in an undisclosed private location for around 23 hours before leaving for Uzbekistan on 30 June in a private jet called VP-CMA, owned by Jet Aviation, said a report in The Tribune.
Despite Ma emphasising that the visit was purely personal, Pakistanis can’t get enough of overstating it as a hopeful opportunity for the country, which has been battling increasing debt and a collapsing economy for some time. In June 2023, Shell Petroleum Company sold its shares and exited the country; other major corporations have scaled back their operations, citing worsening economic conditions.
(Edited by Humra Laeeq)