Jack Ma returns: he reappears at a Chinese government event after being missing for five years

BarcelonaHe was the richest man in China until he collapsed. The founder of the Alibaba e-commerce platform, Jack Ma, practically disappeared from public life five years ago, after a resounding clash with the authorities of his country. In this media silence he has been seen on a few occasions, such as on a holiday in Ibiza or when he announced that began to work as a visiting university professor. However, this Monday the businessman has reappeared in a public event with the Chinese president, Xi Jinping, an event that has been seen as the official reconciliation between Ma and the Beijing government once their differences have been overcome.

The creator of Alibaba was caught in a video by the state television channel CCTV in which he was seen applauding the arrival of Xi and other members of the top brass of the Chinese Communist Party at a symposium with executives from the technology sector. Representatives of other Chinese firms were also present at the event, such as Tencent, BYD, Huawei or DeepSeek. The ostracism of Ma – who is now the eighth richest man in the Asian giant according to the magazine Forbes, with $25.2 billion – began in late 2020, when he gave a controversial speech criticizing Beijing’s approach to the financial system. The businessman accused Chinese banks of having a “pawnshop” mentality that did not help small businesses, one of their main customers.

Days later, Chinese regulators forced the subsidiary to suspend its IPO. fintech Alibaba's Ant Group, which owns the Alipay payment app, was the first to go public. The deal, which fell through just 36 hours before the bell rang, was supposed to be an unprecedented IPO: it would have netted the company some $34.5 billion and boosted its valuation to $314 billion. Until then, Ma was one of the most visible faces of the Chinese business world and was highly regarded by the authorities, as he was also a member of the Chinese Communist Party.

His clash with Xi Jinping's executive generated all kinds of speculation, from the fact that the authorities had banned him from leaving the country to his arrest. However, these rumours have gradually dissipated as the businessman has appeared abroad or at low-profile events. However, all very far from the appearances to which Ma had accustomed the media. The founder of Alibaba even filmed his own kung-fu film and appeared on stage dressed as Michael Jackson during a company event.

Thawing between Ma and Beijing

Some experts suggest that this thaw with Beijing has been brewing since early 2023, when Ant Group met one of the conditions demanded by the Chinese government: to dissolve Ma's power in the company. Many analysts interpreted this decision as the end of a regulatory campaign that had resulted in antitrust fines against Alibaba and other major companies in the country such as Tencent (social media and gaming giant), Baidu (the main Chinese search engine), Didi Chuxing (the Chinese Uber) or Bélibili de (Milian). In the words of the consultancy Trivium China: "The campaign began with Jack Ma and ends with Jack Ma."

The official Xinhua news agency indicated that Xi had given "an important speech" after "listening to representatives of private companies", without offering further details about his intervention. The state media did say that Premier Li Qiang and two other members of the seven-member all-powerful Politburo Standing Committee of the Communist Party of China, Wang Huning and Ding Xuexiang, were present at the meeting.