Jack Ma has made only one public appearance since he bothered the Chinese government last October, in an incendiary speech that led to the suspension of the Ant Group’s record $ 37 billion initial public offering.
But the Financial Times obtained flight details for his private jet, which suggests that while the 56-year-old Chinese billionaire is down, he is far from leaving.
Flight records, compiled with data from Radarbox, a flight tracking company, also dispel rumors that he fled China to Singapore or was placed under house arrest. Instead, they suggest that Ma continues to have access to his Gulfstream jet, which has a range that could easily take him to New York or London.
Ma’s Gulfstream is located in a private terminal in Hangzhou, the headquarters of the companies it founded, Alibaba and Ant Group. The jet identified by the FT had a travel schedule that corresponded to more than a dozen public appearances that Ma made in the three months before he had problems with the authorities.
The records of no other private jet registered in China, or in the Cayman Islands, a popular place for Chinese billionaires to register their aircraft, have the same itinerary, according to Radarbox data.
Flight records show a dramatic slowdown in Ma’s busy schedule after he started hiding. Before October, Mum traveled on average once every three days. In January and February, he traveled only once a week, mostly to Beijing and the tropical island of Hainan, where Bloomberg reported being spotted playing golf.
However, it appears that when Chinese regulators wanted to talk about Ant, it was Ma who flew to Beijing. He is the controlling shareholder of the payments group, but does not occupy a formal position.
People close to Ant and Alibaba and regulators in Beijing confirmed that he was directly involved in negotiations on the future of Ant. A person close to the regulators complained that Ma was still trying to plead his case with top Communist Party leaders. A friend of Ma’s agreed. “He still has the ability to reach the top,” said the person.
The records show intense activity surrounding Ma’s controversial October speech in Shanghai, in which he criticized state banks and regulators. The day after he made the comments, his jet flew to Beijing for a four-day stay.
A few days later, at 9:00 pm on November 1, Ma flew to Beijing again from his hometown, Hangzhou. Chinese regulators announced shortly afterwards that they had called him in for an interrogation and that Ant would face new regulations that effectively torpedoed his IPO. Ma’s jet was parked in Beijing for two weeks.
His next flight to the capital came on Christmas Day, after China’s financial regulators publicly convened the Ant Group for a second discussion on “financial supervision, fair competition and consumer protection”.
In late January, its jet was back in Beijing while Ant and regulators were drawing up a restructuring plan that was agreed but not yet publicly announced.
In contrast, data from flights prior to October show a billionaire who crossed China to collect prizes and fraternize with local authorities.
In late August, Ma’s plane flew to Beijing, where he received an award from the Jordanian government for his help in combating Covid-19. “Viruses don’t have a passport or need a visa,” Ma told the crowd of diplomats at the country’s embassy. A few days later, he was on the air again, on his way to Kunming, where he opened a new campus for his business school.
He and his plane were spotted in the city by the lake of Dali, before returning to Hangzhou for another opening speech for the school year.
On September 9, Ma landed in Chongqing, where he ate kebabs on sticks and drank beer until late at night. Then he flew to Changsha and Fuzhou for meetings with local officials before dealing with reganmian, the famous hot and dry noodles in Wuhan. He ended the month with a speech in Haikou.
“My judgment about the future: it will be difficult in the short term, even more difficult in the medium term, but in the long term it will be good,” Ma told the crowd of businessmen. “Now is the turbulent period when the plane passes through the clouds, so everyone must hold the steering wheel and fasten their seat belts.”
Alibaba referred questions to Ma’s charitable foundation, which did not respond to a request for comment. Ant Group did not respond to a request for comment.
Nian Liu contributed reporting from Beijing