Jack Ma, Alibaba Group Holding Ltd.’s billionaire co-founder, has returned to mainland China after spending roughly a year overseas, Turanews.kz reports citing Bloomberg.
The Bloomberg article had since been updated to reflect Ma’s appearance in Hangzhou, which is home to the founder and Alibaba. He reportedly talked about how ChatGPT posed a challenge to education during the visit.
Ma has kept a low profile for the past three years after criticizing China’s financial regulators in 2020. He became one of the Chinese billionaires who disappeared during the crackdown on technology entrepreneurs.
According to the South China Morning Post, he recently returned to China after more than a year abroad.
The Alibaba-owned publication reported that he made a short stop in Hong Kong where he met with friends and also briefly visited the Art Basel international art fair.
It is also reported that in the past three years, the founder of Alibaba has somewhat stepped back from his duties in his companies and traveled to different countries in order to learn more about agricultural technologies.
BBC News recalls that Jack Ma relinquished control of fintech giant Ant Group in January of this year.
Some experts took this as further evidence that he had fallen out of favor with the Chinese Communist Party for being too outspoken and influential.
In October 2020, Ma stated at a financial conference in Shanghai that traditional banks have a “pawnshop mentality”.
The following month, Ant’s planned £26bn stock market offering, which would have been the largest in the world, was canceled by Chinese authorities, who cited “serious problems” with the firm’s regulation.
Since then, there have been reports that Jack Ma has been seen in various countries including Spain, the Netherlands, Thailand and Australia.
Last November, the Financial Times reported that the Alibaba founder had been living in Tokyo, Japan, for six months.
