Natalie’s Commentary: For more critical reporting of facts, please listen to the following very important video.
Alibama, Tencent Video Games, DIDI Chinese Stocks
As Americans, it is extremely important to keep up with China’s free falling economy due to their ‘Zero-Covid’ policy and Chinese conglomerate companies like Alibaba, Tencent and Didi loosing more than 20% of their value whereby affecting US stock investment companies to naturally pull back from investing.
Unfortunately, due to Biden’s Communist ties to Xi Jinping, China’s Communist dictator, Biden does not want to financially decouple from China. This is further evidence and indication that Biden’s priorities as President of the United States are not aligned with the United States national security.
This is treason, added to all his other impeachable offenses, it is imperative that American’s call for Congress, the House and Senate, to start the impeachment as soon as possible. Putting Nancy Pelosi’s corrupted hold on Democrats aside, which are part of the problem with Biden’s and Obama’s sinister intentions to destroy this country.
Alibama, Tencent Video Games, DIDI Chinese Stocks
Natalie at Nats.news I welcome your comments
Vanished Chinese Billionaire Set to Face Criminal Trial in Shanghai
From The Wall Street Journal By Keith Zhai June 10, 2023 and Nats.news Commentary
Tomorrow Group founder Xiao Jianhua has been kept largely in isolation in mainland China since he was taken from Hong Kong in 2017, say people familiar with the matter.
Xiao Jianhua, speaking in Hong Kong in 2016, had an estimated worth of $5 billion when he disappeared the following year.
A Chinese billionaire whose mysterious disappearance shocked the country’s business community is set to face trial on criminal charges in Shanghai as soon as this month, according to people familiar with the matter.
No official word has emerged on the fate of Xiao Jianhua, a politically connected financier who once boasted vast holdings from insurance to beet farming, since he vanished from his luxury residence in Hong Kong in early 2017 before reappearing in the hands of mainland Chinese authorities.
It couldn’t be determined what specific allegations prosecutors plan to level against Mr. Xiao.
Prosecutors in China’s financial capital are planning to charge Mr. Xiao, who was estimated to be worth $5 billion around the time of his disappearance, with illegally collecting public deposits, according to the people. Previously the charge has been leveled against individuals accused of selling real estate or raising funds for investment from regular people under false pretenses or without the proper licenses.
The crime can carry a prison sentence of five years or more, depending on severity. Defendants formally charged with a criminal offense in China are almost always found guilty.
“After five years of quietly waiting, our family is still, based on my brother’s strict instructions, putting faith in the Chinese government and Chinese law. We hope the authorities can give our family an acceptable conclusion,” Mr. Xiao’s elder brother, Xiao Xinhua, said in an email response to The Wall Street Journal.
The elder Mr. Xiao declined to answer questions about the details of his brother’s case. “It’s very complicated and full of drama,” he said.
Before his disappearance, the younger Mr. Xiao was known for having business connections with Beijing’s political elite. He also did several transactions with one of China’s biggest arms-trading conglomerates.
The State Council’s Information Office and Shanghai government didn’t respond to faxed requests for comment. Mr. Xiao couldn’t be reached for comment.
The Hong Kong Police Force said in an emailed statement that its investigation into Mr. Xiao’s disappearance is ongoing and it has no further information to provide.
Chinese courts rarely find defendants not guilty, and many Chinese business elites charged with wrongdoing have spent months or years in detention before going to trial.
Mr. Xiao, a Chinese-born Canadian citizen, has been held largely in isolation, first in eastern China’s Jiangsu province and most recently in Shanghai, since he was taken across the border from Hong Kong into mainland China and handed over to Chinese authorities in January 2017, according to the people familiar with the matter.
The Canadian government said at the time that it was gathering information and would provide assistance. Since then it has said it continues to raise the case with Chinese authorities but offered no details, citing the need to protect Mr. Xiao’s privacy.
The trial, if it takes place, could bring to a conclusion one of the most sensational and confounding episodes in Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s long-running campaign to rein in the country’s business tycoons.
Mr. Xiao was taken from his home in Hong Kong’s Four Seasons Hotel, where he had lived for several years in a serviced apartment, by a group of human smugglers, who rolled him out of the hotel in a wheelchair and then spirited him into mainland China, the people familiar with the case said.
After rumors of his abduction began to spread, Hong Kong police confirmed that Mr. Xiao had crossed the border but said they didn’t know under what circumstances. Tomorrow Group Holding Ltd. Co., the company Mr. Xiao founded, initially said he was receiving medical treatment abroad.
The billionaire’s disappearance fed fears among Hong Kong businessmen about Beijing’s willingness to violate the “one country, two systems” framework that had allowed the former British colony to largely run its own affairs.
Since then, China’s leadership has grown more aggressive in remaking the Asian financial hub, using a new national security law to smother dissent there and moving to install a former police officer as its next chief executive.
Mr. Xiao, a 1990 graduate of China’s elite Peking University and self-proclaimed devotee of American stock wizard Warren Buffett, built his initial fortune by investing in brokerage firms, banks and insurers just before they took off. He later expanded into real estate and agriculture.
Mr. Xiao’s business empire has been dismantled by Chinese authorities since his disappearance. In 2020, financial regulators in Beijing said they had taken over four insurers, two trust firms, two securities firms and a futures company that together were worth hundreds of billions of dollars. The companies were mostly, if not all, connected to Mr. Xiao’s Tomorrow Group, which said that year that it was cooperating with the government in a restructuring of the conglomerate.
The 50-year-old Mr. Xiao is among a number of high-profile Chinese businessmen whom Beijing has targeted amid a wide-ranging anticorruption campaign. The Chinese leader’s focus on financiers began following a stock-market crash in 2015 that rattled Beijing.
Guo Guangchang, the chairman of financial conglomerate Fosun International Ltd. and another admirer of Mr. Buffett, shook the business world when he briefly disappeared in late 2015. The company didn’t give details of his absence beyond saying he was assisting authorities with an unspecified investigation.
Xu Xiang, a star Chinese fund manager, was sentenced to 5½ years in prison for stock manipulation in connection with the 2015 crash just a week before Mr. Xiao vanished.
In recent years, the government has broadened the scope of its scrutiny, turning its attention to the country’s powerful internet tycoons and other business titans it sees as emblems of private capital run amok.
