China has been gradually increasing the pressure on tech companies

China's super-rich are feeling the effects of Beijing's massive wave of regulation and are now less super-rich. Since November last year, the state and party leadership has been gradually increasing the pressure on tech companies and their influential founders. Stock prices plummet, billions vanish into thin air. The finance portal "Bloomberg" has compiled the effects since the beginning of November in its "Billionaire Index". Accordingly, the wealth of the ten richest Chinese at the time shrank by a whopping 30 billion dollars. Pony Ma, head of Internet giant Tencent, suffered the biggest losses with $ 13.8 billion. This is followed by Alibaba founders Jack Ma and Hui Ka Yan, head of the highly indebted real estate developer Evergrande, each with $ 13.2 billion. Evergrande is - like Alibaba and Tencent - in the sights of the authorities. It all started with Jack Ma, head of the online giant Alibaba and one of the richest Chinese. After Ma had publicly criticized the financial authorities as a brake on innovation, the financial regulator canceled the IPO of Alibaba's financial vehicle Ant Group at the last minute in early November - it would have been the largest IPO in the world to date. Ma then disappeared from the public for a few weeks, for reasons that were as yet unexplained. When he reappeared, he announced that he would like to take care of charitable projects more in the future. Ma, who is no longer active at Alibaba and has sold most of his shares, is now very rarely seen in public. The Fintech Ant is converted into a financial holding and must therefore meet stricter requirements. At first it looked as if the Chinese leadership was merely taking action against an overly frank and overconfident tech tycoon who had challenged the authority of the Communist Party. But that was just the beginning. Since then, the government has been launching one regulatory measure after another and tightening the reins on domestic technology companies - including financial service providers, Chinese companies listed on the US stock exchanges, social media giants, tutoring providers, the delivery service industry and the Online video game area.