Jack Ma is in hiding, dedicated to painting

CNBC reported that Alibaba Group founder Jack Ma is “hiding” and focusing on personal hobbies such as painting as well as charity work. This information was revealed by the company’s CEO and Vice President Joe Tsai in an interview.

After a slip of the tongue last year, Beijing authorities tightened regulations on the company and its financial arm Ant Group, causing Ant’s IPO to be suspended.

Jack Ma has since also almost disappeared.

“He’s currently in hiding. I still talk to him every day,” Tsai said.

“The idea that Jack has a huge amount of power is not quite right. He is just like you and me, a very ordinary person. He built a huge company on the scale of such a huge scale. like this, he’s done great things for society… I think today he just wanted to say: ‘Hey, I want to focus on what I really want to spend my time on’, that’s all. hobbies, all philanthropic activities”.

“Our business is going through a period of restructuring everything. We have paid a large fine. However, we have left it all behind to look to the future.”

Since a speech last October in Shanghai when he publicly criticized the inadequacy of China’s financial management system, he called for an apparatus reform that he said “strangled innovation”. Alibaba and Ant then received a series of “bombs”, even Ant was suspended from its $37 billion IPO deal.

Around mid-May, Jack Ma was seen on a bus on the corporate campus with a series of Alibaba leaders. Wearing a blue T-shirt, white pants, and Chinese-style canvas shoes, Jack Ma smiled brightly.

Before that, Jack Ma appeared in front of the media at an online conference with Russian President Putin. However, it is worth noting that during the event, Jack Ma did not say a single sentence.

On January 20, Jack Ma appeared in a clip of more than 1 minute talking about charity issues including the importance of closing the income gap and improving life in rural China, are also the two biggest priorities of the Xi Jinping administration.

During that appearance, experts all said that the tone of this talk was much “softer” than his “catastrophic” words in October.

Alibaba was recently fined 18.2 billion yuan ($2.8 billion) by the Chinese government for violating antitrust regulations. This latest move raises many concerns about the future of Alibaba’s giant empire.

The above fine amount is equivalent to 4% of Alibaba’s domestic revenue in 2019.

Alibaba will also be required to implement “comprehensive amendments” including tightening internal controls, maintaining fair competition, protecting businesses that do business on platforms and the interests of consumers. use. The company is also required to submit self-regulatory reports to the authorities for three consecutive years.