Jack Ma has resurfaced in a video praising China’s teachers, marking the first time the billionaire has been seen in public since Ant Group’s planned $37bn initial public offering was halted nearly three months ago.
The Chinese tech entrepreneur and founder of ecommerce group Alibaba dropped out of public view after criticising the country’s regulators and state-owned banks in late October, prompting speculation over his whereabouts.
In the wake of the speech, Mr Ma was dressed down by officials in Beijing and regulators halted the IPO of Ant, the payments group he controls, which was set to be the largest.
Mr Ma also skipped the filming of a TV talent show he created for African entrepreneurs in November, which he had been set to judge.
Alibaba’s Hong Kong-traded shares rose 8.7 per cent after the video emerged.
“My colleagues and I have been studying and thinking, and we have become more determined to devote ourselves to education and public welfare,” said Mr Ma, according to comments posted on a news portal backed by the government of China’s Zhejiang province, where Alibaba is based.
The video, posted online on Wednesday, included a brief clip of Mr Ma last week visiting a school his foundation had rebuilt.
Mr Ma’s video came as Alibaba faces an antitrust investigation that has hit its shares and the tech group tries to raise billions of dollars in a bond offering.
The antitrust investigation was announced on December 24, just weeks after the Chinese Communist party’s politburo said it would crack down on monopoly abuses and the “disorderly expansion of capital”. On December 26, China’s central bank issued a rare public rebuke of Ant Group.
During his almost three-month absence from public view, rumours swirled that Mr Ma may have left China. Many of his friends insisted he was still in the country and communicating freely but needed to keep a low profile as Ant and Alibaba’s negotiations with regulators continued.
The wealth of Mr Ma, one of China’s richest people, has fallen from $61bn to $52.9bn following his speech in October, according to Bloomberg data.
Mr Ma said in the video it was the “duty and responsibility of our generation of business operators” to support China’s rural teachers and education.
A spokesperson for the Jack Ma Foundation said Mr Ma had “participated in the online ceremony of the annual Rural Teacher initiative event on January 20”.
His charitable foundation has focused over the past year on Covid-19 relief efforts in China and globally. Mr Ma has been hailed as a hero in Africa for donating medical supplies to every country on the continent.
Over recent years, other Chinese billionaires caught up in high-profile disputes with the government have also disappeared for periods of time or sought to shift attention to their charity work.
After Wang Jianlin’s Wanda Group was forced to rein in an aggressive overseas acquisitions binge in 2017, the property and entertainment tycoon invested in “patriotic” theme parks, some of them in relatively poor rural areas. President Xi Jinping has prioritised poverty elimination as one of his administration’s top objectives.
In December 2015, Fosun Group founder Guo Guangchang briefly went missing, reportedly in connection with a corruption investigation focused on a former Shanghai vice-mayor. His disappearance sparked panic among Fosun’s share and bondholders until he was released a few days later.
Additional reporting by Nian Liu in Beijing
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