Why do Chinese Billionaires Keep Disappearing?

December 10th 2015 - Guo Guangchang, AKA as the Warren Buffet of China, disappears. Guo founded the Fosun Group, a mega conglomerate and investment company with over $100 billion in assets. He is the 17th richest man in China in 2015.

And yet, on December 10th, 2015, Fosun executives reported that they lost contact with their boss.

January 7th, 2016, almost a month after Guo’s disappearance sent shockwaves through the Chinese business community - Zhou Chengjian, billionaire fashion entrepreneur also disappears.

Zhou founded one of China’s best known fashion brands, Meters/bonwe making him the 62nd richest man in China in 2015. And yet, on January 7th, 2016, the company said that they were unable to reach him or the secretary of the board.

January, 2017 - billionaire financier, Xiao Jianhua, who has ties to the Xi Jingping family, gets rolled away in a wheelchair with his head covered by “Chinese public security agents - he was not known to use a wheelchair. Xiao controls the Tomorrow Group, a holdings company with interests in insurance companies, banks, and real estate developers.

At the time, he had a net worth of $6b. Later, Xiao called his family to tell them he was taken to the Mainland but that he was fine.

March, 2020 - real estate mogul, Ren Zhiqiang [chi chiang] posted a brutal essay online hating on the great leader and the Chinese Communist Party’s handling of the virus.

So starting on March 12th, Ren was understandably never heard from again. And his Weibo account, which had 37 million followers - is now deleted.

October 24th, 2020 - Jack Ma delivers a speech at the Bund Finance Summit in Shanghai. Since then, he’s nowhere to be found.

With the only clue to his whereabouts being a three paragraph article from CNBC stating that “the billionaire is not missing. Instead, Ma has been lying low for the time being”

So the question remains - why do Chinese billionaires keep disappearing?

If you’re an aspiring entrepreneur in China, why would you want to start a business if you know that they can take away everything in a moment's notice, and make you disappear? What is the motivation?

If you’re not the type of person that’s “politically attuned,” if you make it to the top, you are gonna get screwed. And even if you do make your money and get out of China, your fate is still uncertain.