Jack Ma, the founder of e-commerce giant Alibaba, made a re-emerged into the public sphere after a long disappearance. Reports from the South China Morning Post and the BBC detail that he has only been seen in public occasionally in the three years since 2020 when he made controversial remarks against the Chinese financial regulators. The 58-year-old entrepreneur had been living in Tokyo most recently as of November of 2022 and had travelled to Thailand, Spain, the Netherlands, and Australia.
His brief reappearance was to the Yungu School in Hangzhou, an institution funded by the Alibaba group which is based in the same city. During the visit, Jack addressed school faculty to comment on the new Artificial Intelligence system, chatGPT and its implications on the “AI era”, noting that it should be used to solve problems instead of being controlled by it.
The tech magnate gave control of the Ant Group – a Chinese Fintech company – in January of 2021, which ran in parallel to increased CCP oversight and a crackdown on tech magnates. Reportedly, the plans to float Ant Group on the stock exchange were hastily cancelled by the Chinese regulator, citing “major issues” inside the company. The sequence of events leading up to Ma’s disappearance led the world to speculate if he had been detained in his home country, a conjecture that turned out to be untrue.
Alibaba is a Chinese global e-commerce giant headquartered in Hangzhou, China, and is one of the world’s largest internet companies. Founded in 1999 by Jack Ma, the company operates e-commerce, retail, internet, AI, and technology businesses in over 200 countries and regions. Through its diverse portfolio, Alibaba has positioned itself as a top company to turn to for digital consumption needs. As of 2021, Jack Ma is China’s richest man with a net worth of USD60.2 billion, according to Forbes.
Jack Ma is a highly popular businessman and a figure in Chinese entrepreneurship and philanthropy. The billionaire was the founder of e-commerce giant Alibaba and was more recently the chairman of the Ant Group. He had made critical comments in 2020 against Chinese financial regulations, contributing to his disappearance and the scrutiny which later ensued on Ant Group. Ma stepped down from his role at Alibaba in 2019 and since then, has gone back to his philanthropic roots. In late 2020, he founded the Jack Ma Foundation which is dedicated to improving education in rural areas and addressing global environmental challenges.
