Jack Ma has resurfaced in a video praising China’s teachers, the first time the billionaire has been seen in public since Ant Group’s planned $ 37 billion initial public offering was halted almost three months ago.
The Chinese technology entrepreneur and founder of e-commerce group Alibaba fell out of public opinion after criticizing state-owned regulators and banks in late October, speculating about his whereabouts.
In the aftermath of the speech, Mr. Mom undressed by Beijing officials and regulators stopped the IPO of Ant, the payment group he controls, which would be the largest.
Mr. Mom also skipped the filming of a TV talent show he created for African entrepreneurs in November and which he would judge on.
Alibaba’s shares traded in Hong Kong rose 8.7 percent with the recording of the video.
“My colleagues and I studied and thought, and we became more determined to dedicate ourselves to education and public welfare,” he said. Ma said, according to comments posted on a news portal backed by the government of Zhejiang province in China, where Alibaba is. is based.
The video, which was posted online on Wednesday, contains a short clip of Mr. Mom visiting a school that rebuilt its foundation last week.
$ 52.9 billion
Jack Ma’s Current Estimated Wealth
The video of mr. Mom came across Alibaba facing an antitrust investigation that hit its shares and the tech group was trying to raise billions of dollars in a bond offering.
The antitrust inquiry was announced on December 24, a few weeks after the Chinese Communist Party’s political bureau said it would suppress monopolistic abuse and the “disorderly expansion of capital”. On December 26, China’s central bank issued a rare public reprimand from Ant Group.
During his nearly three-month absence from public opinion, rumors circulated that Mr. Mom may have left China. Many of his friends insisted that he was still in the country and communicating freely, but that they should keep a low profile while Ant and Alibaba’s negotiations with regulators continued.
According to Bloomberg, the wealth of Ma, one of China’s richest people, fell from $ 61 billion to $ 52.9 billion.
Mr. Mom said in the video that it is the “duty and responsibility of our generation of business people” to support China’s rural teachers and education.
A spokesman for the Jack Ma Foundation said Mr. Mom ‘participated in the online ceremony of the annual Rural Teacher Initiative on January 20’.
Its charity has focused over the past year on Covid-19’s relief efforts in China and worldwide. Mr. Mom was praised as a hero in Africa for donating medical supplies to every country on the continent.
In recent years, other Chinese billionaires caught in high-profile disputes with the government have also disappeared for periods or are trying to draw attention to their charitable work.
After the Wanda group of Wang Jianlin was forced to suppress an aggressive overseas acquisition in 2017, the real estate and entertainment magnate invested in ‘patriotic’ theme parks, some of which were in relatively poor rural areas. President Xi Jinping prioritized the elimination of poverty as one of the key objectives of his government.
In December 2015, the founder of the Fosun group, Guo Guangchang, was briefly missing in connection with a corruption investigation focused on a former deputy mayor of Shanghai. His disappearance sparked panic among Fosun’s shareholders and mortgagees until he was released a few days later.
Additional reporting by Nian Liu in Beijing