When China launched a sudden investigation into Ant Group, the financial subsidiary of the tech giant Alibaba, in 2020, it sent a shiver through China’s business community. Regulators halted Ant Group’s IPO, which was expected to be the world’s largest at the time, and later fined Ant and other tech platforms billions of dollars. Alibaba’s founder, Jack Ma, who had earned the ire of Chinese leaders after criticizing Beijing’s cautious approach to financial regulation, retreated from the public