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Alibaba’s Jack Ma Touring Dutch Research Institutes: SCMP

Chinese billionaire touring European companies and research institutions involved in agricultural infrastructure and plant breeding


Chinese financial authorities are set to issue a fine of at least 8 billion yuan ($1.1 billion) on Ant Group, sources have revealed.
Jack Ma has stayed out of the limelight since his infamous speech in late 2020 and the crackdown by regulators on his and many other tech companies in China. File photo from 2015 by Reuters.

 

Alibaba Group founder Jack Ma has been touring Dutch research institutions to pursue his interest in agricultural technology, Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post (SCMP) reported, quoting people familiar with his trip.

The billionaire has been out of public view since he criticised China’s regulatory system in a speech a year ago. His empire promptly came under scrutiny from regulators and the $37-billion IPO of his fintech affiliate Ant Group was suspended.

Earlier this month, Ma, China’s most famous and outspoken entrepreneur, flew to the Spanish island of Mallorca, where his luxury yacht is anchored, his first trip abroad since he fell out with Chinese regulators, Spanish papers reported last week.

The SCMP, owned by Alibaba, published three photos of Ma dated October 25. In two he was seen wearing a protective gown and holding flowerpots, while in the third he was said to be was analysing technology by aluminium extrusion specialist BOAL Systems.

 

European Tour

The billionaire, who retired as Alibaba’s chairman in 2019, will continue touring European companies and research bodies involved in agricultural infrastructure and plant breeding, according to people familiar with his plans, the SCMP reported.

Ma believed combining the technology he researched with Alibaba’s cloud computing, big data analysis and artificial intelligence could help modernise Chinese agriculture, the people said.

On September 1, photos of Ma visiting greenhouses in eastern Zhejiang province, home to both Alibaba and Ant, went viral on Chinese social media.

The next day, Alibaba said it would invest 100 billion yuan ($15.5 billion) by 2025 in support of “common prosperity“, becoming the latest corporate giant to pledge support for the wealth sharing initiative driven by President Xi Jinping.

 

  • Reuters with additional editing by Jim Pollard

 

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Jim Pollard

Jim Pollard is an Australian journalist based in Thailand since 1999. He worked for News Ltd papers in Sydney, Perth, London and Melbourne before travelling through SE Asia in the late 90s. He was a senior editor at The Nation for 17+ years and has a family in Bangkok.

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