Ma, the billionaire founder of tech giants Alibaba and Ant Group, has not been seen since regulators blocked Ant’s record public offering in November.
Alibaba and Ant co-founder Jack Ma has resurfaced after months out of public view, suppressing intense speculation about the plight of the billionaire struggling with the growing scrutiny of his empire on the Internet.
China’s best-known businessman spoke to many teachers at an online conference on Wednesday, part of an annual event that the billionaire organizes to recognize the achievements of rural educators. His appearance, first reported on a local blog, has been confirmed by people familiar with the matter.
Ma’s resurgence may help to quell lingering rumors about his fate as Beijing pursues investigations into online finance titan Ant Group Co. and Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. The executive has remained out of public view since early November, when Chinese regulators torpedoed Ant’s $ 35 billion IPO, enforced fintech regulations, then ordered a review of Ant and launched a separate antitrust investigation on Alibaba – all in a few days.
The attack on Ma’s trillion-dollar corporate empire encapsulates a broader campaign to control a generation of Chinese technology giants that Beijing now sees as having too much control over the second world economy. The flood of actions against its twin companies showed how Beijing lost patience with the extraordinary power of its tech magnates, now seen as a threat to the political and financial stability that President Xi Jinping values most.