Alibaba founder Jack Ma has been spotted in China after spending months abroad in a potential sign that Beijing is reaching out to the tech giants again after a roughly 18-month crackdown on the sector.
On Monday, Ma visited the Yungu School in Hangzhou, the city where Alibaba is headquartered, to talk to teachers about how to educate children in the age of artificial intelligence, according to a WeChat post from the school.
The billionaire said technologies like the popular ChatGPT have brought challenges to education, but artificial intelligence can be used to solve problems, according to the WeChat post.
It is the first time Ma has appeared publicly in China. since last year. Ma has been traveling outside of China for the past few months and has been seen in spainJapan and Thailand.
Ma’s comeback comes after an intense crackdown on his empire that began in late 2020 when Ant Group, the billionaire’s fintech firm, was forced to archive your mass listing in Hong Kong and Shanghai. Ma made comments that was critical of China’s financial regulator before the cancellation of the listing.
After that, Beijing tightened regulations on the domestic sector. Alibaba, the company founded by Ma, was hit with a Antitrust fine of $2.6 billion in 2021.
Ant Group has been reformed under the supervision of China’s central bank to comply with regulations, while Ma has been slowly relinquishing control of fintech firm.
China’s tightening of rules on the technology sector has fueled investor fears that President Xi Jinping was turning against private business and entrepreneurs.
But China has faced weak economic growth over the past year due to its now-discarded «covid zero» policy. Meanwhile, Beijing has worked to revitalize the economy. Allowing Ma back into the fold could be an acknowledgment by Beijing that it needs private companies to do that.
“Getting economic growth back on track is probably the top policy priority of the [Communist] The faces of the party right now, and a more optimistic business class is key to this,” Xin Sun, senior professor of China and East Asian business at King’s College London, told CNBC by email.
Sun said he suspects there was «some kind of agreement» between Ma and the government for him to return and be seen in public.
“By doing so, the government intends to show its warmth towards the private sector and investors: if even Jack Ma is perceived to have been pardoned, everyone else should feel safe and welcome,” Sun said.
There are other signs that Beijing is loosening some of its regulatory tightening on the sector. Regulators have been giving foreign gaming licenses to be released in China, for example. And Chinese ride-sharing company Didi, which faced a cybersecurity investigation by regulators and was forced to delist from the New York Stock Exchange, noted that he was looking to expand his business.