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| - Fact Check: Truth behind viral post showing Chinese biz tycoon Jack Ma's struggle
A picture showing four people, including two children and a disabled man, has gone viral on social media, giving the impression that they are not financially too well off.
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India Today Fact Check
The boy encircled in the photo is reportedly a lookalike of Jack Ma.
A picture showing four people, including two children and a disabled man, has gone viral on social media, giving the impression that they are not financially too well off. One of the children in a dirty and torn yellow t-shirt has been encircled and it is being claimed that it is the childhood picture of Jack Ma, Chinese business magnate and co-founder of Alibaba Group.
Along with the photo, there are multiple claims in the viral post which apparently explains how Jack Ma overcame rejections in his life.
India Today Anti Fake News War Room (AFWA) has found the claim to be misleading. The boy encircled in the photo is not Jack Ma but Fan Xiaoqin, an 8-year-old from China who, as per reports, has a striking resemblance to the Alibaba founder. However, the other claims related to Jack Ma’s struggle are almost true.
This post is quite viral on Facebook since September 2018. Netizens are also sharing this post on Twitter.
The doppelganger
With the help of reverse search, we found many news articles carrying the viral photo. The encircled boy in the viral photo is reportedly Fan Xiaoqin, a lookalike of Jack Ma. He is also known as Mini Jack Ma in China. In the viral photo, Xiaoqin is posing with his family.
Xiaoqin’s photos and videos went viral in China in 2016 when it was found that he looks like Jack Ma.
As per a BBC report, the Xiaoqin family lives in China’s Jiangxi province, are poor and rely on government benefits.
Although, at the World Economic Forum summit in 2018, Jack Ma also said that he was born in a very poor family and never got a great education.
Rags to riches
AFWA probed the other claims in the viral post reflecting Jack Ma’s struggle and found that they are almost correct.
Claim 1: Jack Ma was the only person who was turned down among 24 applicants for a KFC job.
Claim 2: He scored just 1 mark out of 120 in mathematics in his college entrance examination.
Claim 3: Jack Ma could not convince Silicon Valley to fund Alibaba.
Claim 4: Harvard University rejected his application for admission 10 times.
Claim 5: Jack Ma was turned down for 30 jobs.
At the World Economic Forum summit in 2015, Jack Ma said similar things about himself while speaking about the struggles and rejections he faced in his life.
Therefore, we can conclude that though the viral photo has no relation with Jack Ma’s childhood, but from reports available on the Internet, one can say that he has a rags-to-riches story.
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