A few days ago, China experienced the largest IPO case in history and lame incident. The "Ant Group" established by Jack Ma and Alibaba Group's spin-off of its financial business was formerly known as "Ant Financial Services". In 2018, the valuation reached 160 billion US dollars (4.6 trillion Taiwan dollars), the core service behind it is Alipay, which is familiar to many Taiwanese.
According to research, in 2019, 60% of people in China will use digital payment every day , and it is not limited to online consumption, and photo background removing the proportion of use in physical stores is as high as 87%. With such a huge business opportunity, Ant Group's simultaneous listing on the Shanghai and Hong Kong Stock Exchanges raised a total of 230 billion yuan (about 990 billion Taiwan dollars). However, after Ma Yun made a rhetoric to the leaders of the Communist Party at the Shanghai Financial Forum, the four major regulatory agencies in China immediately interviewed Ant Group, the listing plan was suspended, and it was even rumored that Xi Jinping personally ordered to prevent Ant Group's IPO.
Taiwan keeps touting China's electronic payment, but it actually has social problems The issue of payment has a close relationship with the rulers. It can be seen from cases such as the Chinese government's design of a digital yuan and Facebook's setback in the Western world. However, if you ignore the political motives behind the Communist government's real-name system and social control, Taiwan and the world will be affected. For most people, the level of "going cash" seems to be a symbol of progress in cities and countries. In such an atmosphere, not only Liu Leyan and others who paid electronically, but also many "normal" Taiwanese would also praise China's ability to pay digitally, saying that Alipay can be used to buy vegetables and noodle soup. People often use this to supervise the pace of Taiwan's financial digitization. But let's take a step back and reconsider something that many people take for granted: The less money you use, the better it must be? In fact, it is not always the case, and the United Kingdom discovered this very early.