From what we can see so far (also reported in this Reuters article), he seems to have made the speech fully knowing the upcoming regulatory changes. It seemed t

From what we can see so far (also reported in this Reuters article), he seems to have made the speech fully knowing the upcoming regulatory changes. It seemed to be his last gambit to try to appeal to whoever is relevant out there (e.g. central government) to stop the regulators from enacting tougher rules, since changing the required funding level for loans from 2% to 30% will no doubt make the originally envisioned IPO valuation completely moot. It might have been a case where Ant has been planning the IPO for some time already, but in the meantime the regulators became determined to rein in the rampant private loan industry. Even though the older generations were renowned for saving, the young generation is being encouraged to borrow like there's no tomorrow, and the situation is becoming a lot like the US. Shadow banking has been a huge problem in China for a few years already (you can easily Google news reports about it). This is a huge risk that the regulators will understandably want to curb, especially given the uncertainty this year. I think it's a case of Ma knowing of this regulatory change but still wanting to salvage the original valuation of the IPO, just as any capitalist would want to try to do, but failed. So there might be no point in reading too much into it and dismissing the situation to an essentialist argument "because China/CCP, of course this happened...". Sure, in other countries the regulators might not move so resolutely to halt an IPO. But from what we can see the motive is genuine and out of concerns of the crazily leveraged business model, instead of anything dirty or political.