Alibaba's Jack Ma makes first public appearance since Oct in online meeting

Updated : January 20, 2021 12:08 PM IST

Alibaba Group founder Jack Ma, who was missing for months, has finally made a public appearance since the crackdown by the Chinese authorities. Ma, who was for a long time seen as the poster boy of the Chinese model of entrepreneurship met 100 rural teachers in China via a live video meeting on Wednesday morning, his first since October.

The news about the appearance was first reported by Tianmu News, a news portal under government-backed Zhejiang Online. The Jack Ma Foundation said that Ma participated in the online ceremony of the annual Rural Teacher Initiative event on Wednesday. Alibaba Group also confirmed that Jack Ma attended the online event.

In the 50-second video, Ma, dressed in a navy pullover, spoke directly to the camera from a room with grey marble walls and a striped carpet. It was not clear from the video or the Tianmu News article where he was speaking from.

He addressed teachers receiving the Jack Ma Rural Teachers Award, who in previous years would have attended a ceremony organised by the Jack Ma Foundation in the Chinese seaside city of Sanya.

"We cannot meet in Sanya due to the epidemic," he said in the speech, which did not discuss his whereabouts. "When the epidemic is over, we must find time to make up for everyone's trip to Sanya, and then we will meet again!"

The appearance is expected to end speculations that emerged across the world about his whereabouts after he missed the final episode of a TV show featuring him as a judge, amid a regulatory clampdown by Beijing on his sprawling business empire.

The entire drama developed after he blasted China's regulatory system in a speech that set him on a collision course with officials, leading to the suspension of a $37-billion IPO of Alibaba's financial affiliate Ant Group.

-with agency inputs

Published : January 20, 2021 10:28 AM IST

Alibaba's Jack Ma makes first public appearance since Oct in online meeting

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