Meituan’s stock price plummeted after CEO Wang Xing posted a Tang poem that was meant to criticize the Chinese government…
Huang Zheng, founder of Pinduoduo (left) and Wang Xing, founder of Meituan – Photo: Bloomberg/Getty Images. Huang Zheng, founder and CEO of e-commerce firm Pinduoduo, and Wang Xing, founder and CEO of food delivery platform Meituan, have seen their fortunes plummet after being criticized by an activist group for consumers. According to Forbes, the share price of this Pinduoduo 11/5 fell more than 9%, “blowing” $ 4.3 billion from Huang Zheng’s assets. The founder of Pinduoduo is currently worth $42.9 billion according to Forbes’ real-time statistics, making him the 4th richest person in China. Meanwhile, Wang Xing’s fortune fell by $2.5 billion as investors continued to sell off Meituan shares in the May 11 session. The share price fell another 5.3% after falling 7.1% in the previous session. Wang is currently worth $19.5 billion. A day earlier, the Shanghai Consumer Council said it had convened both Pinduoduo and Meituan. The organization criticized Pinduoduo for its poor quality goods, rampant counterfeiting on the company’s e-commerce platform, and poor after-sales service. The organization also condemned Meituan for issues with refunds, failed food deliveries and misleading content on the company’s platform. The statement of the Shanghai Consumer Council comes as the Chinese government is tightening control of the country’s largest technology firms. Last week, Wang was also criticized after posting a poem of a Tang poem allegedly intended to criticize the Chinese government on the social network Fanfou. The poem titled The Book of the Dead (Book Burning Pit) by poet Zhang Jie, written at the end of the Tang Dynasty, condemns Qin Shi Huang’s act of burning books to control people’s thoughts and suppress the mind. awake. The poem is meant to mock Qin Shi Huang for seeing academia as the greatest threat, but his reign was eventually overthrown by non-intellectuals. A few days later, Wang deleted the post, explaining that the poem was just a reminder that “the most dangerous enemies are often the ones we least expect”. The 42-year-old CEO also added that Meituan’s biggest rival appears to be Ele.me but is in fact “unnoticed companies and business models that are disrupting the food delivery industry”. Late last month, Beijing’s anti-trust authority officially launched an investigation into Meituan’s alleged request for sellers to be allowed only the Meituan platform or another competitor. Since then, the company’s stock price has fallen by nearly 18 percent. On Weibo, many Chinese netizens compared Wang’s posting of the poem to Jack Ma’s speech criticizing the financial management system in October 2020. The co-founder of Alibaba at the time even said bluntly that Chinese banks operate like “pawn shops”. Jack Ma’s speech is said to spark a series of strong moves by Chinese authorities against Alibaba as well as its subsidiary Ant Group. Ant’s “big” IPO was suspended a few days later. And Alibaba was fined a record $2.8 billion for monopolies last month.
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