Editor’s note for Thursday, January 28, 2021

My thoughts today: 

Share prices have been spiking for AMC, a movie theater chain dealing with a pandemic, GameStop, a brick-and-mortar chain that sells digital goods, and BlackBerry, the has-been phone company. A horde of online traders hopped up on a Reddit.com message board has been buying up the stock of these companies, in an apparent prank on Wall Street firms that had been shorting those companies.

The China connection: Wanda, the Chinese real estate conglomerate, which once had ambitions to re-create Hollywood in China, bought a controlling stake in AMC in 2012 during a wild spree of spending and publicity. Wanda now holds about 60% “of voting rights in AMC through ownership of all the company’s super-voting Class B shares.”

In 2017, Wanda’s billionaire chairman, Wáng Jiànlín 王健林, disappeared from public view as rumors swirled that he and his family had been stopped by the authorities from boarding a private plane at Tianjin Airport, and prohibited from leaving the country. 

Wang since reappeared, but has been rather quiet compared with his publicity-seeking go-go years, and Wanda has not made any splashy acquisitions or headline-grabbing deals in recent years. So even though AMC’s stock is up around 840% so far this year, I wouldn’t expect any flashy moves from Wanda. 

Wang Jianlin makes me think about Jack Ma (马云 Mǎ Yún), the Alibaba founder whose publicity-seeking go-go years probably came to an end late last year with the suspension of the Alibaba-affiliate Ant Group IPO. 

Like Wang Jianlin, Jack Ma won’t disappear — he’s just going to be much quieter. And his Ant Group will face tightened regulatory reviews, anti-corruption investigations targeting the financial sector encouraged by Xí Jìnpíng 习近平, and antitrust probes aimed squarely at China’s fintech giants. 

Ma probably doesn’t need your sympathy though. His net worth remains north of $50 billion. 

Our word of the day is anal swab (肛门拭子 gāngmén shìzi) which is how you might get your COVID-19 test if you arrive in Beijing or Qingdao from overseas. 

Upcoming events: 

• Serica’s #DoingWellDoingGood series continues on February 4, where we’ll hear innovators in international affairs, climate change, and healthcare discuss the U.S.-China relationship and much more. 

—Jeremy Goldkorn, Editor-in-Chief