World’s billionaire factory shudders as China cracks down

China’s crackdown on Ant won praise last month from Berkshire Hathaway Inc. Vice Chairman Charlie Munger, who said in an interview with CNBC that the "Communists did the right thing” by letting Ma know he couldn’t "wade into banking...and just do whatever he pleased.”

BEIJING: It was the kind of brazen PR stunt that Jack Ma might have dreamed up.

But this wasn’t the flamboyant Chinese billionaire who disappeared from public view eight months ago. It was Mark Zuckerberg, bobbing up and down on a hydrofoil surfboard, clutching an American flag and exuding all the confidence of a man worth $130 billion.