The island of Mallorca in Spain, which does not have a tech industry like Jack Ma could find in the U.S.

Photo: Clara Margais/Zuma Press

Instead of wasting time on the phone listening to communist dictator Xi Jinping pretend that he speaks for the Chinese people, President Joe Biden should be welcoming more of them to a place where they’ll be free to speak for themselves. For some time this column has been urging U.S. presidents to recruit more Chinese entrepreneurs to bring their talents to America. Perhaps the most talented of them all is still receiving incentives to leave Beijing.

The Journal’s Jing Yang and Raffaele Huang report from Hong Kong:

Billionaire Jack Ma plans to relinquish control of Ant Group Co., people familiar with the matter said, part of the fintech giant’s effort to move away from affiliate Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. after more than a year of extraordinary pressure from Chinese regulators.
The authorities halted Ant’s $34 billion-plus IPO in 2020 at the 11th hour and are forcing the technology firm to reorganize as a financial holding company regulated by China’s central bank. As the overhaul progresses, Ant is taking the opportunity to reduce the company’s reliance on Mr. Ma, who founded Alibaba.
Mr. Ma, a 57-year-old former English teacher and one of China’s most prominent entrepreneurs, has been the target of government action that appears designed to reduce his influence and the power of his companies.

China’s government is run by perhaps the world’s foremost authority on restricting individual autonomy and that doesn’t seem likely to change in the immediate future. The Journal’s Chun Han Wong reports:

Chinese leader Xi Jinping is elevating trusted subordinates into party and government posts that command key levers of political power, galvanizing his authority as he prepares to extend his rule for another five years.
Poised to claim a third term as Communist Party chief at a twice-a-decade party congress this fall, Mr. Xi has assigned associates to senior roles overseeing law enforcement and propaganda in recent weeks, clearing their paths toward higher office. Some vocal Xi supporters won promotion, while one prominent ally retained his position in the face of public anger over his recent performance. Others out of favor with Mr. Xi have been eased into less-important roles.
The Chinese leader also stepped up a broad propaganda drive in recent months to celebrate his decade in power. Top lieutenants have sung Mr. Xi’s praises with rising fervor, calling on party members to swear loyalty to their lingxiu—a reverential title that means “leader” and is most closely associated with Mao Zedong, whom the party honors as its weida lingxiu, or “great leader.”

Mao can make a strong claim to be history’s most prolific killer, which is bound to raise doubts about a regime that still calls him a great leader. There is little doubt that the regime under Mr. Xi has been hostile to entrepreneurs.

The timing for a U.S. recruitment is compelling. While U.S. professional basketball and hockey fans think of summer as the season when teams attempt to sign free agents, summer also presents opportunities for the country as a whole.

Following the Journal’s report on Mr. Ma, Bloomberg’s Lulu Yilun Chen and Abhishek Vishnoi added some enticing details:

Jack Ma is taking a weeks-long tour in Europe after largely disappearing from public view for almost two years, adding to signs that China’s government is easing pressure on the entrepreneur as he steps back from a business empire that had made him one of the country’s most powerful people.
The 57-year-old co-founder of Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. has popped up at restaurants in Austria, toured a university in the Netherlands to learn about sustainable agriculture and docked his yacht off the Spanish island of Mallorca, according to reporting by Bloomberg and local media.
While it’s not Ma’s first trip outside China since he criticized Communist Party officials in 2020 over regulation of his fintech giant Ant Group Co., it’s a stark change from the days when the billionaire was being advised by the government to not leave the country. In one sign of how skittish investors had been about the tycoon’s fate as recently as two months ago, Alibaba shares briefly lost $26 billion after a state media report that authorities had imposed curbs on a person surnamed Ma. Subsequent information made clear the report was referring to someone else.

Perhaps the Biden administration could persuade the entrepreneur named Jack Ma to pop up in Silicon Valley or Austin or even Miami.

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Annals of Government Finance
The Journal’s Melissa Korn reports:

The Education Department will likely lose $197 billion on loans it made over the past 25 years, a massive swing from its predicted $114 billion in income, according to a federal watchdog.
The Government Accountability Office said in a report Friday that because of policy changes and updated estimates on how much borrowers will actually repay, the Direct Loan program, which had $1.4 trillion in debt outstanding at the end of the last fiscal year, will fall far short of its original plan to make money for the federal government. Instead, they said, it will run deep in the red.

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Annals of Government-Created Shortages
PBS NewsHour reports:

The nationwide baby formula shortage is now in its sixth month. Despite tons of imports and domestic production rebounding, formula supplies are still low for parents across the United States.

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There Is No Free Energy
Taxpayers experiencing sticker shock over the alternative energy subsidies in the pending reconciliation bill should remember that subsidy recipients will also leave large environmental footprints. The Manhattan Institute’s Mark Mills writes:

. . . all the favored energy-transition technologies — solar, wind and batteries — require a lot more stuff to be mined, refined, fabricated and constructed to replace the same amount of energy provided by the hydrocarbon-based energy infrastructures that power the world today. In many cases, we’re talking about an unprecedented 3x to 70x increase over today’s use of not only a wide array of metals such as copper, nickel, aluminum, lithium and neodymium, but also a 10x jump in the use of basic materials such as steel, glass and concrete.

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James Freeman is the co-author of “The Cost: Trump, China and American Revival.”

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(Teresa Vozzo helps compile Best of the Web.)