Zhang Yazi/China News Service/Getty Images
- Three years after he criticized Chinese regulators, Alibaba cofounder Jack Ma is still lying low.
- Once the poster child of Chinese tech, his words angered Beijing and precipitated a crackdown on his business empire.
- Ma has since been busy touring the world studying high-tech agriculture and morphing into the next phase of his life.
Alibaba cofounder Jack Ma was once the invincible poster boy of Chinese tech.
Outspoken and flamboyant, the tech entrepreneur was everywhere from the media and conferences to headlining company events.
Savvy and outgoing — remember that time he danced to Michael Jackson in front of thousands of people? — Ma charmed millions across the globe by appearing to be the antithesis of the typical, straitlaced Chinese executive keen to toe the Communist Party line. In short, Ma — a party member himself — appeared more American than Chinese.
But after Ma criticized Chinese regulators, he disappeared from the public eye in late 2020 and Beijing cracked down on his businesses. Like many other Chinese CEOs before him, Ma vanished after falling from the party's favor, proving nobody is above President Xi Jinping's regime.
Since his run-in with Beijing, Ma's whereabouts and what he's been up to have been the stuff of widespread public speculation and global media headlines — originating from social media posts, unannounced visits, and unnamed source tip-offs.
Now, it appears Ma is debuting a refreshed version of himself, in what you just might call Jack Ma 3.0.
Jack Ma 1.0: A struggling teacher who wanted in on the tech scene
It's easy to understand why Ma is so popular in the US and China alike. A classic rags-to-riches tale, Ma's life story resonates well with the masses.
Ma, whose birth name was Ma Yun, was born to a poor family in Hangzhou, China.
He didn't excel in school. He failed his college entrance exams twice before passing on his third try and entering Hangzhou Teachers Institute.
After graduating from college in 1988, he famously applied to dozens of jobs — with an equal number of rejections, including from KFC — before he was finally hired as an English teacher.
Ma has said he loved his job — but it only paid $12 a month. He's also been open about the failures he's encountered throughout his career.
"As a young boy — even today — I never thought I would be here," Ma said at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland in 2018. "When I look back, every problem I met when I was a kid benefited me."
He started his own business in translation services in 1994, and, after a business trip to the US in 1995, he launched a digital business in the early days of the internet.
His first business — China Pages — failed, but he gathered a band of 17 friends in 1999 to set up Alibaba. The site they launched allowed exporters to list their products directly on the platform, ushering China into the ecommerce era.
Even though Ma is arguably the most successful internet entrepreneur of this generation, he started Alibaba with no knowledge of marketing or computers.
But his start as a teacher taught him how to rally the troops, identify and cultivate talent, delegate work, and chart the direction for Alibaba, he said at Davos in 2018.
"He was more of a teacher than a manager," Brian Wong, the 52nd employee of Alibaba, told Business Insider of Ma's management style. Wong spent nearly two decades at Alibaba over the course of three separate employment stints — from 1999 to 2020. Most recently, he was the company's group vice president and remains an advisor to an Alibaba unit focused on education and training.
"Jack does have an aspect of him that speaks his mind," Wong said. "For the most part, it's a positive asset in terms of how he has built the business."
Jack Ma 2.0: An outgoing Big Tech exec — until he wasn't
As an internet entrepreneur, Ma was pivotal in steering the company, and his charisma corralled the support he needed.
"He's a master at communicating a shared aspiration that so many people can relate to," said Wong.
Ma founded Alibaba.com in June 1999. In October, the company managed to raise $5 million from Wall Street behemoth Goldman Sachs and another $20 million from Japanese tech investor SoftBank.
The work culture at Alibaba was intense, but Ma was known for maintaining a sense of fun. In the early 2000s, when setting up the Taobao shopping platform, he made his team do headstands during breaks to boost their energy.
Alibaba boomed through the 2000s in China. By the mid-2010s, Ma started dreaming beyond China.
In 2014, Alibaba started trading on the New York Stock Exchange, making Ma the richest person in Asia by the end of that year with an estimated $25 billion fortune.
"What I'm thinking about is how we can make Alibaba a platform for global small business," Ma told journalist Charlie Rose at the World Economic Forum in Davos in 2015.
Ma himself cavorted with the biggest names in business, tech, and government globally — from Bill Gates and Softbank CEO Masayoshi Son to then president-elect Donald Trump.
But there was a problem: Outspoken Ma was starting to outshine his political masters in Beijing, as Financial Times reported in April 2021.
Some of what he was saying could also be potentially embarrassing for Beijing, a person close to the Hangzhou government told the media outlet.
After Ma openly hit out at Chinese regulators in October 2020 for stifling innovation, Beijing ran out of patience. What came next was an extended period in which he was, to the public eye, invisible.
Jack Ma 3.0: a high-tech farming titan
Ma had already been retired from Alibaba for about a year by the time he vanished.
Even though he was lying low, Ma kept busy. Over the past two years, he has been spotted at various institutes around the world that specialize in high-tech farming.
In October 2021, Ma was in Spain learning about agriculture and technology related to environmental issues. He has also traveled to the Netherlands, Japan, and Thailand to study agrotech.
In May, Tokyo College announced that Ma would be taking up a teaching position while researching sustainable agriculture and food production.
In January, he was in Thailand, where he dined with Supakit Chearavanont, the chairman of Charoen Pokphand Group, a major animal feed producer.
His entrepreneurial streak also appears to be back — or perhaps it never disappeared.
In November, Ma incorporated a company called "Hangzhou Ma's Kitchen Food," according to media reports. The company is involved in the sales of pre-packaged food and the processing and retail of agricultural products, per South China Morning Post.
Ma hasn't publicly talked about why he's moving into farming. He did not respond to BI's request for comment sent via his personal foundation.
Wong told BI Ma has always been moved by how the digital economy helped connect rural communities to growth opportunities. His foundation supports educators in such communities as well.
Agriculture is thus an extension of Ma's recognition that there are issues like climate change, scarcity, and inequality that need to be addressed, with technology as a driver, Wong said.
Ma seems to have articulated the same thoughts in a video speech he delivered to rural teachers in August, SCMP reported. His words show that while he may be pivoting his attention to a new sector, the same entrepreneurial bent he's displayed all along is still there.
"I found that a place that does well in agriculture is not necessarily a place with good resources, but a place with unique thinking, and people with imagination," he said.
"The rural areas do need technology, while I think unique thinking and creativity are important as well," he added.