BBC
The disappearance last month of technology industry dealmaker Bao Fan has rekindled interest in a recent Chinese phenomenon – vanishing billionaires.
The founder of China Renaissance Holdings – with a client list that has included internet giants Tencent, Alibaba and Baidu – is seen as a titan in the country’s tech sector.
Mr Bao’s case has followed a well-trodden path: he went missing for days before his company announced that he was “co-operating in an investigation being carried out by certain authorities in the People’s Republic of China”.
As has also become customary, there has been no word yet on which government body is carrying out the probe, what it is about or Mr Bao’s whereabouts.
The mystery shrouding his disappearance comes after a number of Chinese business leaders have gone missing in recent years, including Alibaba boss Jack Ma.
While vanishing billionaires tend to get much more attention, there have also been a number of less publicised cases of Chinese citizens going missing after taking part in, for example, anti-government protests or human rights campaigns.
Mr Bao’s disappearance has once again shone a spotlight on the view that this is one of the ways that President Xi Jinping is tightening his control of China’s economy.
It came in the run-up to the annual National People’s Congress (NPC), a rubber-stamp parliament, at which plans for the biggest overhaul in years of China’s financial regulatory system were announced this week.
A new financial regulatory watchdog will be set up to oversee most financial sectors. Authorities said this would close current loopholes caused by multiple agencies monitoring different aspects of China’s financial services industry, worth trillions of dollars.
In 2015 alone, at least five executives became unreachable, including Guo Guangchang, chairman of conglomerate Fosun International, which is best known in the West for owning English Premier League football club Wolverhampton Wanderers.
Mr Guo went missing in December of that year, with his company announcing after his reappearance that he had been assisting with investigations.
Two years later Chinese-Canadian businessman Xiao Jianhua was taken from a luxury hotel in Hong Kong. He had been one of China’s richest people and last year was jailed for corruption.
In March 2020 billionaire real estate tycoon Ren Zhiqiang vanished after calling Mr Xi a “clown” over his handling of the pandemic. Later that year, after a one-day trial, Mr Ren was sentenced to18 years in prison on corruption charges.
The most high-profile disappearing billionaire was Alibaba founder Jack Ma. The then-richest person in China vanished in late 2020 after criticising the country’s financial regulators.
The planned mega-listing of shares in financial technology giant Ant Group was shelved. And despite donating almost $10bn (£8.4bn) to the ‘Common Prosperity’ fund, he has not been seen in China for more than two years. He has also not been charged with any crimes.
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