Alibaba's Jack Ma Makes 1st Public Appearance Since October 2020

Beijing: Putting an end to all speculation, Chinese entrepreneur and Alibaba founder Jack Ma made his first public appearance since October of last year in a video meeting with 100 teachers of rural China.

Tianmu News, a news portal under Zhejiang Online, a provincial Zhejiang government-backed news website, reported the meeting on Wednesday.

The video meeting was part of an annual event Ma hosts to recognize rural educators. In a video of the event that has since been circulated widely online, Ma spoke about his plans to increase his philanthropic work.

The Jack Ma Foundation informed that Ma participated in the online ceremony of the annual Rural Teacher Initiative event on Wednesday. Alibaba Group also verified that Jack Ma attended the online event. He addressed teachers receiving the Jack Ma Rural Teachers Award. The event was earlier held in the Chinese seaside city of Sanya.

It is to be mentioned that social media has been ripe with speculations about Ma's apparent disappearance after he failed to appear during the final episode of a TV show where he is featured as a judge, especially with the Chinese regulatory clampdown on his business.

Following his failure to appear, Ma was replaced in the final episode of the TV game show for entrepreneurs called Africa's Business Heroes. Reuters reported that an Alibaba spokesperson linked this to scheduling conflicts and declined further comments.

The entrepreneur has not appeared in public since his appearance in October 2020 in a forum in Shanghai where he criticized China's regulatory system, resulting in the suspension of a $37 billion (roughly Rs. 2,77,000 crores) IPO of Alibaba's financial arm Ant Group. Chinese regulators also launched an anti-trust probe into Alibaba, who have in recent months increased a clampdown on anticompetitive behaviour in China's growing internet space.

Ma's reappearance triggered a sharp jump by more than 6% in the Hong Kong shares of his e-commerce business.

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