<p><strong>Where is Jack Ma? </strong>After two months where he seemed to have disappeared altogether, Chinese billionaire and Alibaba co-founder Jack Ma is now "<a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2021/01/05/alibaba-founder-jack-ma-is-laying-low-for-the-time-being-not-missing.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">laying low</a>," according to media reports, after a fallout with the Chinese government. Ma has not been seen in public nor heard of since late October, when he <a href="https://www.scmp.com/economy/china-economy/article/3106949/jack-ma-urges-financial-regulation-reform-eve-ant-groups" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">openly criticized</a> China's banks and financial regulators. Just days later, Beijing <a href="https://www.npr.org/2020/11/12/934251081/ants-ipo-woes" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">blocked</a> Ma from listing his fintech company Ant on the Hong Kong and Shanghai stock exchanges, in a deal that would have made Ant the world's <a href="https://theconversation.com/ant-group-is-holding-the-biggest-ipo-of-all-time-heres-what-it-is-147403" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">largest</a> initial public offering. When Ma <a href="https://www.marketwatch.com/story/jack-ma-offered-china-parts-of-ant-group-to-save-ipo-11608514442" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">tried</a> to save the IPO by offering the government a stake in Ant, Beijing doubled down by <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/china-launches-antitrust-investigation-into-alibaba-its-most-successful-internet-company/2020/12/24/c312ba4c-45a5-11eb-8deb-b948d0931c16_story.html" target="_blank">opening</a> an antitrust probe into Alibaba, the world's top e-commerce firm. Indeed, Ma's <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/24/technology/china-jack-ma-alibaba.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">fall from grace</a> has sent a strong message to other Chinese tycoons: don't question the regime's wisdom — <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2020/11/04/tech/ant-ipo-beijing-china-intl-hnk/index.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">or else</a>. It also plays into wider public resentment about <a href="https://asia.nikkei.com/Spotlight/Most-read-in-2020/Jack-Ma-vs.-the-Party-Inside-the-collapse-of-the-world-s-biggest-IPO" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">rising income inequality</a> in China, which the ruling Communist Party is very worried about. Either way, we're watching to see if Ma will find a way to make amends with the government, or whether his low profile is a preamble for Beijing to take over Ant and other parts of the Alibaba empire.</p><strong>Incompetence and horror in Egypt:</strong> Over the past several days, <a href="https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20210105-egypts-health-minister-admits-to-oxygen-crisis-in-hospitals/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">shocking video footage</a> has made the rounds online of an oxygen leak that suddenly killed every patient in the intensive care unit of an Egyptian hospital. Egypt's government first denied the story, accused the Muslim Brotherhood of making it up, and pressured hospital employees to keep quiet. Public outrage is growing, however, and Egypt's health minister has now admitted that hospitals face oxygen shortages as a new wave of COVID takes hold across the country. This combination of horrific event, personal tragedy, state incompetence, and public fury recalls the massive warehouse explosion in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/19/world/middleeast/beirut-explosion-investigation-arrests.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Beirut</a> that killed more than 200 people, left 300,000 homeless, and destabilized Lebanon's government in August 2020. Egypt is far more politically stable than Lebanon, but we can expect more of these kinds of stories from other cash-strapped, poorly governed countries in 2021, particularly because they will be the <a href="https://apnews.com/article/poorer-countries-coronavirus-vaccine-0980fa905b6e1ce2f14a149cd2c438cd" target="_blank">last </a>to receive the vaccinations that allow human, economic, and political recovery to begin.
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