The investigation into Xiao Jianhua’s opaque business empire has been six years in the making. In 2018, The New York Times received a thumb drive of documents from the Tomorrow Group, Xiao Jianhua’s conglomerate which had interests in banking, insurance and real estate before it was dismantled by Chinese authorities. The documents have been used in various reporting efforts, but last year Mike Forsythe, at the Times, pulled in The Wire China to help decipher the deluge of files.

In the video above, learn how the reporters on the investigation worked together to disentangle the documents and discover the surprising connection with Jack Ma. Below, learn more about Xiao and his empire.

WHO IS XIAO JIANHUA?

Xiao, who attended Peking University and was the head of the university’s student union during the Tiananmen Square protests, was known as the banker to China’s political elite, including the sister and brother-in-law of Chinese leader Xi Jinping. Tomorrow Group was once estimated to be worth more than $100 billion, and Xiao has donated more than $50 million to Peking University and Tsinghua University, as well as $10 million to Harvard University.

Xiao is notorious for complex and convoluted business practices. Chinese media reported in 2013 that he controlled as many as nine listed companies and 17 banks. A 2014 profile by The New York Times (by Forsythe and our very own David Barboza) reported that he had acquired stakes in at least 30 financial institutions, while other estimates have put that figure as high as 60. In the new investigation, reporters uncovered what they called a “Rosetta Stone” for Xiao’s empire: a detailed list of Xiao’s shell companies in the British Virgin Islands, and the “white gloves” who owned them on paper. 

In 2017, Xiao, who holds passports from Canada and Antigua and Barbuda, was abducted from the Four Seasons Hotel in Hong Kong and brought into police custody in mainland China. The Times reported that video footage captured by security cameras in the hotel lobby showed that Xiao was led out of the Four Seasons in a wheelchair with his head covered. According to The Times report, he was accompanied by a group of unidentified men with a large suitcase. (While in Hong Kong, associates said he was usually protected by his own team of female bodyguards.) Hong Kong police did not explain his disappearance.

Following his abduction, Chinese regulators took over or dismantled most of Xiao’s companies. In August 2022, Xiao was sentenced to prison for 13 years for alleged bribery and misusing funds which the court claimed had threatened China’s financial security. Xiao was fined $960,000, and Tomorrow Group was fined $8.1 billion.

But even after Tomorrow Group’s mainland holdings were broken up, Xiao’s offshore empire continued to secretly back Jack Ma’s companies. In fact, our investigation showed that Xiao’s network stood to make over $300 million from the IPO of Ant Group before it was canceled at the last moment in 2020.

See above for how our reporters found the Xiao network’s stake in Ant Group through WireScreen. The Wire and The Times confirmed that Liu Di was a proxy for Xiao with other documents and interviews.

Ma, speaking through a lawyer, told The Wire and The Times that he “never had any business relationship with Mr. Xiao.”

Such a massive cache of documents leaves unanswered questions. We still don’t know, for instance, if Xi Jinping knew about the connection between Jack Ma and Xiao Jianhua or if it contributed to his decision to cancel Ant’s IPO. But if the world ever hopes to understand what happened to Jack Ma, it needs to know who was doing business with him.