Jack Ma, founder and executive chairman of the Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba, is in talks to buy an undisclosed stake in the Chinese business and financial magazine, Caixin, through Alibaba’s financial arm, Ant Financial, according to Bloomberg News.
While Alibaba has no direct ownership in Ant Financial, the banking and finance company is majority-owned by Ma and his associates, and is the holding company for Alibaba’s online payment system, Alipay. The deal with Caixin invites comparisons to Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos’ 2013 purchase of the Washington Post for $250 million.
If Ant does wind up with a stake in Caixin magazine, it will mark a second major media investment in 2016 for Ma, following closely on the heels of Alibaba’s $266 million December purchase of the South China Morning Post, an English-language newspaper based in Hong Kong.
Alibaba has also invested in other Chinese media companies and social media platforms including a 30 percent stake in China Business News, the financial newspaper and TV show produced by Shanghai Media Group, which it purchased for around $200 billion.
In 2012, Caixin closed a funding round that included investors Tencent, an Alibaba rival, and China Media Capital.
The magazine said in a release this morning that despite taking on corporate investors, its editorial integrity will not be compromised by its investors’ business interests. In the past, Caixin’s editor-in-cheif, Hu Shuli, has been critical of Alibaba and its handling of Ant Financial, alleging that the e-commerce giant transferred Alipay to Ant without approving the transfer with its majority shareholders, Yahoo and SoftBank Group. (Ma quickly responded that Hu lacked internal information about the transfer.)
While the objectivity of Caixin might not be compromised by taking on investors from the business world, that doesn’t mean that Caixin’s content won’t change, if the Bezos-owned Washington Post is any model.
Bloomberg reported in December that Bezos had significantly influenced the digital success of the Washington Post, increasing focus on online traffic to its site. In November, 71.6 million people had visited the Washington Post’s sites, giving the paper a 4 percent edge on rival the New York Times, which saw 68.8 million visits.
Bloomberg also reported that Bezos is making the Post a more data-driven news outlet, with Post executives taking on “Jeffisms,” such as calling certain ideas that frustrate readers as “reader hostile,” and reducing things like “cognitive overhead” or “friction” that make readers less inclined to subscribe to the Post’s digital news channels.
In addition, Bezos championed Amazon-related partnerships with his newspaper, like trial subscriptions to the Washington Post’s Kindle app and subscription discounts for Amazon Prime members. He also affected some executive decisions about the Post, including cuts to retirement benefits, freezing some pensions, and bringing on Politico co-founder Fred Ryan as a publisher for the paper.
If Ma winds up buying stake in Caixin, he may exert the same kind of influence over the publication, bringing Alibaba’s online and business savvy to the magazine while expanding his holdings in the Chinese media market.
