jack ma yun biography

The Inspiring Life Story Of Alibaba Founder Jack Ma, Now The Richest Man In China

Fresh off the biggest IPO in history, Alibaba founder and chairman Jack Ma is now the richest person in China .

Ma is now worth an estimated $25 billion , which includes his 7.8% stake in Alibaba and a nearly 50% stake in payment processing service Alipay.

Ma is a true rags-to-riches story. He grew up poor in communist China, failed his college entrance exam twice, and was rejected from dozens of jobs, including one at KFC, before finding success with his third internet company, Alibaba. 

Jack Ma (a.k.a. Ma Yun) was born on October 15, 1964, in Hangzhou, located in the southeastern part of China. He has an older brother and a younger sister. He and his siblings grew up at a time when communist China was increasingly isolated from the West, and his family didn't have much money when they were young.

 Source: 60 Minutes , USA Today

Ma was scrawny and often got into fights with classmates. "I was never afraid of opponents who were bigger than I," he recalls in "Alibaba," a book by Liu Shiying and Martha Avery. Still, Ma had hobbies just like any other kid. He liked collecting crickets and making them fight, and was able to distinguish the size and type of cricket just by the sound it made.

Source: USA Today , Business Insider

After then-US president Richard Nixon visited Hangzhou in 1972, Ma's hometown became a tourist mecca. As a teenager, Ma started waking up early to visit the city's main hotel, offering visitors tours of the city in exchange for English lessons. The nickname "Jack" was given to him by a tourist he befriended.

Source: 60 Minutes

Without money or connections, the only way Ma could get ahead was through education. After high school, he applied to go to college — but failed the entrance exam twice. After a great deal of studying, he finally passed on the third try, going on to attend Hangzhou Teacher's Institute. He graduated in 1988 and started applying to as many jobs as he could.

He received more than a dozen rejections — including from KFC — before being hired as an English teacher. Ma was a natural with his students and loved his job — though he made only $12 a month at a local university.

Source:  Business Insider , Crocodile in the Yangtze

Ma had no experience with computers or coding, but he was captivated by the internet when he used it for the first time during a trip to the US in 1995. He had recently started a translation business and made the trip to help a Chinese firm recover a payment. Ma's first online search was "beer," but he was surprised to find that no Chinese beers turned up in the results. It was then that he decided to found an internet company for China.

Source: Business Insider , USA Today

Though his first two ventures failed, four years later he gathered 17 of his friends in his apartment and convinced them to invest in him and his vision for an online marketplace he called "Alibaba." The site allowed exporters to post product listings that customers could buy directly.

Source: Business Insider ,  60 Minutes

Soon, the service started to attract members from all over the world. By October 1999, the company had raised $5 million from Goldman Sachs and $20 million from SoftBank, a Japanese telecom company that also invests in technology companies. The team remained close-knit and scrappy — "We will make it because we are young and we never, never give up," Ma said to a gathering of employees.

Source: Business Insider , Crocodile in the Yangtze

He has always maintained a sense of fun at Alibaba. When the company first became profitable, Ma gave each employee a can of Silly String to go wild with. In the early 2000s, when the company decided to start Taobao, its eBay competitor, he had the team working on it do handstands during breaks to keep their energy levels up.

Source: Business Insider

In 2005, Yahoo invested $1 billion in Alibaba in exchange for about a 40% stake in the company. This was huge for Alibaba — at the time it was trying to beat eBay in China — and it would eventually be an enormous win for Yahoo too, netting it ~$10 billion in Alibaba's IPO alone.

Ma stepped down from his post as CEO in 2013, staying on as executive chairman. Alibaba went public on Sept. 19. "Today what we got is not money. What we got is the trust from the people," Ma told CNBC. The company's $150-billion IPO was the largest offering for a US-listed company in the history of the New York Stock Exchange. It also made Ma the richest man in China, with an estimated worth of $25 billion.

Source: REUTERS, CNBC , AFP

Alibaba employees threw a big party at the company's Hangzhou headquarters to celebrate. One employee even took the party as the perfect opportunity to propose. Ma told employees at a press conference that he hopes they use their newfound wealth to become "a batch of genuinely noble people, a batch of people who are able to help others, and who are kind and happy."

Source: QQ.com , USA Today

The IPO may have made Ma an extremely wealthy man, but he hasn't made any flashy purchases (yet), and he still has some pretty modest hobbies. "I don't think he has changed much, he is still that old style," Xiao-Ping Chen, a friend of Ma, told USA Today. He likes reading and writing kung fu fiction, playing poker, meditating, and practicing tai chi. He has even teamed up with Jet Li to spread awareness of tai chi, and he brings a trainer along with him when he travels.

Source: USA Today

Ma developed an interest in environmentalism when a member of his wife's family became sick with an illness that Ma suspected was caused by pollution. He sits on the global board of The Nature Conservancy, and spoke during a session of the Clinton Global Initiative this September. He's also been instrumental in funding a 27,000-acre nature reserve in China.

Source: Fortune

Ma has largely kept his family life out of the spotlight. He married Zhang Ying, a teacher whom he met at school, after they graduated in the late '80s. "[He] is not a handsome man, but I fell for him because he can do a lot of things handsome men cannot do," Zhang has said. They have two children — a daughter and a son who is an undergrad at UC Berkeley. Ma has also audited history classes at his son's college.

Source: Want China Times , Businessweek

He does have a few splurges, however. In March 2013, Alibaba spent a reported $49.7 million for a Gulfstream G550, mostly for Ma's use.

Source: China Daily

Ma is something of a celebrity in China, and crowds of people show up to listen to him speak.

Source:  60 Minutes

The company also hosts annual talent shows, and Ma is a natural entertainer. At a company anniversary event, he dressed up as a punk rocker for a performance in front of 20,000 Alibaba employees.

Company lore has it that Ma came up with the name "Alibaba" while sitting in a San Francisco coffee shop. In "Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves," a secret password unlocks a trove filled with unbelievable riches. Ma's company has, in a way, revealed the potential of small and mid-sized businesses across the globe.

Source: Entrepreneur

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The unbelievable and inspiring life story of Alibaba founder Jack Ma - the richest man in China

Jack Ma — born Ma Yun — was born on October 15, 1964, in Hangzhou, located in the southeastern part of China. He has an older brother and a younger sister. He and his siblings grew up at a time when communist China was increasingly isolated from the West, and his family didn't have much money when they were young.

Source: 60 Minutes , USA Today

Ma was scrawny and often got into fights with classmates. "I was never afraid of opponents who were bigger than I," he recalls in "Alibaba," a book by Liu Shiying and Martha Avery. Still, Ma had hobbies just like any other kid. He liked collecting crickets and making them fight, and was able to distinguish the size and type of cricket just by the sound it made.

Source: USA Today , Business Insider

After then-US president Richard Nixon visited Hangzhou in 1972, Ma's hometown became a tourist mecca. As a teenager, Ma started waking up early to visit the city's main hotel, offering visitors tours of the city in exchange for English lessons. The nickname "Jack" was given to him by a tourist he befriended.

Source: 60 Minutes

Without money or connections, the only way Ma could get ahead was through education. After high school, he applied to go to college — but failed the entrance exam twice. After a great deal of studying, he finally passed on the third try, going on to attend Hangzhou Teacher's Institute. He graduated in 1988 and started applying to as many jobs as he could.

He received more than a dozen rejections — including from kfc — before being hired as an english teacher. ma was a natural with his students and loved his job — though he only made $12 a month at a local university..

Source: Business Insider , Crocodile in the Yangtze

At the World Economic Forum in 2016, Jack Ma revealed he has even been rejected from Harvard — 10 times!

Ma had no experience with computers or coding, but he was captivated by the internet when he used it for the first time during a trip to the us in 1995. he had recently started a translation business and made the trip to help a chinese firm recover a payment. ma's first online search was "beer," but he was surprised to find that no chinese beers turned up in the results. it was then that he decided to found an internet company for china..

Source: Business Insider , USA Today

Though his first two ventures failed, four years later he gathered 17 of his friends in his apartment and convinced them to invest in his vision for an online marketplace he called "Alibaba." The site allowed exporters to post product listings that customers could buy directly.

Source: Business Insider , 60 Minutes

Soon, the service started to attract members from all over the world. By October 1999, the company had raised $5 million from Goldman Sachs and $20 million from SoftBank, a Japanese telecom company that also invests in technology companies. The team remained close-knit and scrappy. "We will make it because we are young and we never, never give up," Ma said to a gathering of employees.

He has always maintained a sense of fun at alibaba. when the company first became profitable, ma gave each employee a can of silly string to go wild with. in the early 2000s, when the company decided to start taobao, its ebay competitor, he had his team do handstands during breaks to keep their energy levels up..

Source: Business Insider

In 2005, Yahoo invested $1 billion in Alibaba in exchange for about a 40% stake in the company. This was huge for Alibaba — at the time it was trying to beat eBay in China — and it would eventually be an enormous win for Yahoo too, netting it $10 billion in Alibaba's IPO alone.

Ma told bloomberg he knew alibaba had made it big when another customer offered to pay his restaurant bill. "i’m your customer of alibaba group, i made a lot of money and i know you don’t make any money," said the customer. "i’ll pay the bill for you.", ma stepped down from his post as ceo in 2013, staying on as executive chairman. alibaba went public september 19 2014. "today what we got is not money. what we got is the trust from the people," ma told cnbc..

Source: REUTERS , CNBC , AFP

The company's $150-billion IPO was the largest offering for a US-listed company in the history of the New York Stock Exchange. It also made Ma the richest man in China, with an estimated worth of $25 billion.

Alibaba employees threw a big party at the company's hangzhou headquarters to celebrate. one employee even took the party as the perfect opportunity to propose. ma told employees at a press conference that he hopes they use their newfound wealth to become "a batch of genuinely noble people, a batch of people who are able to help others, and who are kind and happy.".

Source: QQ.com , USA Today

The biggest day in the calendar for Alibaba is China's "Singles' Day," a retaliation to Valentine's Day which supposedly celebrates the country's singletons. In 2016, the site recorded nearly $18 billion in sales in 24 hours.

The ipo may have made ma an extremely wealthy man, but he has made very few flashy purchases, and he still has some pretty modest hobbies. "i don't think he has changed much, he is still that old style," xiao-ping chen, a friend of ma, told usa today. he likes reading and writing kung fu fiction, playing poker, meditating, and practising​ tai chi..

Source: USA Today

In March 2013, Alibaba spent a reported $49.7 million on a Gulfstream G550, mostly for Ma's use.

Source: China Daily

One of his greatest passions is the environment. Ma developed an interest in environmentalism when a member of his wife's family became sick with an illness that Ma suspected was caused by pollution. He sits on the global board of The Nature Conservancy and spoke during a session of the Clinton Global Initiative in 2015. He's also been instrumental in funding a 27,000-acre nature reserve in China.

Source: Fortune

Ma has largely kept his family life out of the spotlight. He married Zhang Ying, a teacher whom he met at school, after they graduated in the late 1980s. "[He] is not a handsome man, but I fell for him because he can do a lot of things handsome men cannot do," Zhang has said. They have two children — a daughter and a son.

Source: Want China Times , Businessweek

Ma most recently made headlines after meeting President Donald Trump. Despite Trump's protectionist attitude towards trade, Jack Ma said China and the United States are not about to be drawn into a trade war. "Give Trump some time. He's open minded," Ma told a panel at Davos in January.

Ma is something of a celebrity in china, and crowds of people show up to listen to him speak., the company also hosts annual talent shows, and ma is a natural entertainer. at a company anniversary event, he dressed up as a punk rocker for a performance in front of 20,000 alibaba employees., company lore has it that ma came up with the name "alibaba" while sitting in a san francisco coffee shop. in "ali baba and the forty thieves," a secret password unlocks a trove filled with unbelievable riches. ma's company has, in a way, revealed the potential of small and mid-sized businesses across the globe..

Source: Entrepreneur

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Alibaba's Jack Ma: From 'crazy' to China's richest man

BEIJING — China's richest man celebrated his 50th birthday last week in the United States and expects his company will last twice as long, plus two years.

Revealing his ambition — and a love of numbers common in China — Jack Ma says Alibaba will last 102 years so the Internet empire he founded in 1999 can span three centuries.

Under Ma's maverick leadership, the 15-year-old firm has already bridged a period of extraordinary change in global trade and the Chinese economy. In a nation with little e-commerce but plenty of Communist Party bureaucrats, he raised a still-growing giant whose U.S. initial public offering , which will start trading under the BABA ticker Friday, is the largest in history.

REJECTED BY KFC

His rags-to-riches journey is just as spectacular. A scrawny Ma, just over 5 feet tall, was rejected by KFC and other employers in his hometown of Hangzhou in east China. He believed in the Internet's business potential when few other Chinese did. Outlandish ideas earned him the nickname "Crazy Jack Ma." No one thinks he's mad now, even when dressing in wild wigs and lipstick for his annual meeting where he serenades a stadium full of Alibaba employees.

Ma's readiness to make fun of himself, and speak his mind, stands in contrast to China's often conservative corporate barons. Charismatic and energetic, this former teacher has become an inspiration to millions across China. He flunked at math but loved English, and countless books and DVDs sell his business lessons in every airport lounge.

Ma — whose net worth is $21.9 billion,according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index — now stars in the coming-out party for China's private sector onto the world stage. He praises and uses Western management techniques but also quotes regularly from Chairman Mao Zedong. He is a fan of China's kung fu novels and made those legends part of his company's culture. He travels the world with a tai chi trainer.

Jack Ma, whose Chinese name is Ma Yun, was born in 1964 into a markedly different China. Communist Party campaigns dominated daily life. His parents performed a type of musical storytelling that was banned during Mao's devastating Cultural Revolution, from 1966 to 1976.

Ma's grandfather, a local official under the Nationalist Party that Mao defeated, was persecuted as an enemy of the Communist revolution. Ma and his relatives all suffered at that time, wrote Chinese author Zhang Yongsheng in a 2009 biography.

Like most Chinese parents back then, Ma's father beat him growing up. But there were childhood pleasures, too. He liked collecting and fighting crickets, an ancient pastime that Mao also banned. Ma developed an expert ear, able to distinguish the type and size of cricket just by the sound, his friend and personal assistant at Alibaba, Chen Wei, wrote in his 2013 book on Ma.

Starting at age 12, Ma says he awoke at 5 a.m. to walk or bicycle to Hangzhou's main hotel so he could practice his English with foreign tourists, who started trickling into the country after Mao's death in 1976. He did this for nine years and acted as a free tour guide to many, befriended several and later visited one family in Australia.

Those experiences opened his eyes. "I realized what they told me was quite different from what I had learned in school or heard from my parents," Ma told Xiao-Ping Chen, a professor at the University of Washington in Seattle, in an interview published last year.

MA MEETS THE INTERNET

After twice failing the national college entrance exams, Ma entered what he called "Hangzhou's worst college." Graduating in 1988, Ma married his college sweetheart and taught English at a local college for five years, earning $15 a month. During that time, he also applied for, and failed to land, jobs at a local KFC, a hotel and the city police.

Determined to enter business, Ma set up a translation company, but he still had to peddle goods on the street to get by. He traveled to the United States in 1995 as a translator to help a Chinese firm recover a payment. The attempt failed, and the American who owed money pulled a gun on him, Ma says. But a friend in Seattle showed Ma the Internet, and an idea began brewing.

Ma noticed there was not a single online listing for "China" and "beer," unlike those that popped up for American and German beer. He returned to China and set up a listing site that he later sold to the government. After working in Beijing for an Internet firm under the Ministry of Commerce, Ma returned home to Hangzhou to pursue his dream.

ALIBABA FOUNDED

With the help of more than a dozen friends who pooled their resources — just $60,000 — he founded Alibaba, a business-to-business online platform. The company now makes more profit than rivals Amazon.com and e-Bay combined, as China's burgeoning middle class are big spenders online, and small companies rely on Alibaba and its online payment system.

Ma seized opportunities as China was transforming into a market economy. At the time, the Internet was first being promoted, and small, private businesses struggled to get loans and had to compete against government-protected state firms, said economist Feng Pengcheng, director of the China Research Center for Capital Management at the University of International Business and Economics in Beijing.

"The business model Ma Yun created in China suited the Chinese market. It might be a failure in the U.S. market, but it's so successful in China," Feng said. "What's more, Ma Yun is good at cooperating with other talents. His company culture and his personal charm attracted employees, and his slogans are uplifting," he said.

For a billionaire so outspoken on company and business issues, Ma says little about his family and manages to keep his private life quiet and scandal-free. Ma and his wife Zhang Ying have a son, an undergrad at the University of California-Berkeley, where Ma had audited classes. A black-and-white photo of a young Ma with his older brother and younger sister went viral this month in China's cyberspace, as many people were unaware their richest citizen even had siblings.

"Ma Yun's lifestyle is very simple and modest. His hobbies are still tai chi and kung fu novels," Chen, his friend and assistant, said last week from Boston, while accompanying Ma on Alibaba's U.S. roadshow before the IPO.

"I don't think he has changed much, he is still that old style. After the IPO, I am sure his lifestyle will be simpler. He won't change," Chen said. In his book, being published in English this month, Chen said Ma enjoys meditation in the mountains, playing poker with friends and writing his own kung fu fiction. By Ma's own account, he believes in both Buddhism and Taoism, and follows many tenets of Confucianism.

'OPPOSITE OF STUFFY'

"My father said if you were born 30 years ago, you'd probably be in a prison, because the ideas you have are so dangerous," Ma told Charlie Rose in a 2011 TV interview. Despite such bravado for a Western audience, Ma has always been careful in China to avoid statements and actions that could jeopardize his business.

If China ever did permit open elections, Ma could become a popular candidate for top office, said Duncan Clark, a Brit who is a Beijing-based technology consultant. "He is the opposite of stuffy and canned. He's funny, creative and a compelling speaker. I often thought he has another career in stand-up comedy," he said.

Ma resigned last year as Alibaba's CEO, but he clearly remains in charge as the firm's executive chairman. He has hinted at exploring more "cultural" pursuits, such as film-making, education and environmental protection.

"One issue facing China is that people's wallets are bulging, but their heads are empty," he told Hong Kong's South China Morning Post last year. Ma also promises more philanthropy, including what may be China's largest charity foundation. Expect to hear plenty more from maverick Ma.

Contributing: Sunny Yang

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Jack MA Yun

199th 

Congregation

 (2018)

Doctor of Social Sciences honoris causa

Dr Jack Ma is the lead founder and Executive Chairman of the Alibaba Group. He holds a BA in English language education from the Hangzhou Teachers Institute.

In 1995, Dr Ma founded China's first online business directory, China Pages. This entrepreneurial experience made him understand the difficulties facing small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). In 1999, he led a team to establish Alibaba.com with the goal of helping SMEs succeed.

The Alibaba Group's mission from the start has been "to make it easy to do business anywhere". The company is now the world's largest e-commerce platform and a world-leading big data platform, serving tens of millions of SMEs and entrepreneurs around the globe with technologies such as e-commerce, online financial services, cloud computing and smart logistics.

Having spent six years as a university teacher, Dr Ma is strongly influenced by his past career. In his view, the title of CEO stands for "Chief Education Officer", as CEOs should be responsible for helping their customers and staff become more successful than themselves.

After revolutionising e-commerce in China and around the world, Dr Ma has now committed himself to improving the state of the world through culture, entrepreneurship and education. He has established funding opportunities to support entrepreneurs and young people in Hong Kong and Taiwan. Additionally, the Jack Ma Foundation focuses on philanthropic initiatives in the areas of education, environmental protection, poverty alleviation, and entrepreneurship.

Dr Ma is also a member of the Foundation Board of the World Economic Forum and Chairman of the Zhejiang Chamber of Commerce and of the China Entrepreneur Club. He is a Sustainable Development Goals Advocate for the United Nations and a Special Adviser of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development for Youth Entrepreneurship and Small Business.

In recognition of his contributions to technology, society and the world, the University has resolved to confer upon him the degree of Doctor of Social Sciences honoris causa .

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Jack Ma Biography: Birth, Childhood, Education, Philanthropy, Business and Entertainment Career

Jack ma biography: jack ma is a chinese businessman. investor and politician. after serving for around 13 years, jack ma has stepped down from softbank group’s board of directors. in september 2019, he was retired as alibaba 's executive chairman. .

Jack Ma (age 55 years) is a Chinese businessman. investor and politician. Jack Ma, the co-founder of Alibaba was retired as its Executive Chairman in September 2019. After serving for around 13 years, Jack Ma has stepped down from Softbank Group’s board of directors. Alibaba is the multinational technology conglomerate. 

Jack Ma or Ma Yun is one of the world's most powerful people and is the global brand ambassador for Chinese business. With a net worth of $42.1 Billion, Jack Ma is the second wealthiest person in China, as of April 2020. 

Jack Ma: Childhood and Education

Jack Ma was born on September 10, 1964, as Ma Yun in Hangzhou, Zhejiang, China. Jack Ma started studying English at a very young age. At the age of 9 years, Jack Ma travelled 27 kilometres on his bicycle to guide tourists so that he can practise English. Jack Ma further became pen pals with a foreigner who nicknamed him Jack as the Chinese name was hard for him to pronounce.    

Jack Ma: Business Career

Jack Ma applied for 30 different jobs but faced rejection. He went for a job with the police and was told that he is not good. He went to KFC with 24 other people, everyone was selected except him. 

In 1994, Jack Ma heard about the Internet and started his own company 'Hangzhou Haibo Translation Agency'.

In the year 1995, Jack Ma along with his friends visited the United States. In the US, he found information related to beer from several countries except for China. He was surprised to find no general information about China on the Internet. Thus, Jack Ma along with his friends created a website 'ugly' related to China and launched it at 9:40 AM. By 12:30, Jack started receiving e-mails from several investors. 

In April 1995, Jack Ma started his second company with He Yibing named 'China Pages'. On May 10, 1995, Jack Ma and He Yibing registered the domain of the China Pages in the US 'chinapages.com'. Within 3 years, the company's worth was 800,000 USD. 

After the success of China Pages, Jack Ma started building websites for different Chinese companies. However, in 2010, Jack Ma revealed that he never wrote a code nor made any sale to the customers. 

During 1998-1999, Ma was the head of an IT company established by the China International Electronic Commerce Center,  Ministry of Foreign Trade and Economic Cooperation. In 1999, Jack Ma resigned and founded 'Alibaba' with his 18 friends. 

In October 1999 and in January 2000, Alibaba won a total $25 million foreign investment twice. To improve the global e-commerce system, Jack Ma founded  Taobao Marketplace, Alipay, Ali Mama and Lynx. After its huge success, eBay offered to purchase Taobao but Ma turned down the offer. Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang invested $1 billion in Taobao. 

In September 2014, Alibaba was rising on the New York Stock Exchange over $25 billion in IPO and became one of the most valuable technology companies in the world. This was the largest initial public offering in US history. Jack Ma served as executive chairman of Alibaba Group, which holds-- Alibaba.com, Taobao Marketplace, Tmall, eTao, Alibaba Cloud Computing, Juhuasuan, 1688.com, AliExpress.com, and Alipay.

In November 2012, Alibaba's online transaction exceeded one trillion yuan. In 2015, Jack Ma founded a business school 'Hupan School'.  

On January 9, 2017, Jack Ma met US President Donald Trump and discussed 1 million job openings in the coming five years in favour of Alibaba. 

Jack Ma: Entertainment career

Jack ma: philanthropy.

Jack Ma founded a philanthropic organization 'Jack Ma Foundation' which focused on improving education, environment and public health.

In 2008, Alibaba donated $808,000 after the Sichuan earthquake caused destruction. In 2009, Jack Ma was appointed as the trustee of The Nature Conservancy's China program, and in 2010, became one of the Directors of the organization. 

In 2015, Alibaba Hong Kong Young Entrepreneurs Foundation was launched to support the entrepreneurs of Hong Kong to help grow their business. The same year, Alibaba funded for the construction of the houses damaged by the earthquake in Nepal. 

In 2018, Jack Ma started the  Jack Ma Foundation and announced his retirement from Alibaba citing several reasons-- educational work, philanthropy, and environmental causes.

In 2019, Forbes awarded him the 'Malcolm S. Forbes Lifetime Achievement Award' for his help to the underprivileged communities-- China, Africa, Australia, and the Middle East. He was also listed as 'Asia's 2019 Heroes of Philanthropy'.

In 2020, Alibaba Foundation and Jack Ma Foundation launched several initiatives to ease the distress caused by the coronavirus pandemic. Both the foundation donated medical supplies to several countries-- the United States and in the countries in Asia, Africa and Europe.

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#33 by Generosity Index with 0.03%

#5 individual donor by total amount ¥130.36 million.

Province: Zhejiang

Industry: Internet and Communication Technology

Ma Yun (Jack Ma), founder of Alibaba Group. In 2020, he donated 130.36 million RMB to the Jack Ma Foundation for charitable purposes, of which 1.9 million RMB was for the COVID-19 prevention and treatment assistance program.

2020 Statistics

¥130.36 million donated, #5 individual donor, generosity index 0.03%, #33 most generous.

MA Yun (Jack MA)

• 日本語 ( Japanese )

Sustainable agriculture and food production

Jack Ma founded Alibaba Group in 1999 and served as its executive chairman from 1999 to September 2019.  Mr. Ma previously served as Alibaba Group’s chief executive officer from 1999 to May 2013.

Mr. Ma founded the Jack Ma Foundation in 2014, and its efforts are focused on supporting education, entrepreneurship and environmental protection, among other areas.  Mr. Ma is a United Nations Sustainable Development Goals Emeritus Advocate and serves as a global board member of The Nature Conservancy and is co-chair of the Paradise Foundation.

Mr. Ma has been awarded honorary doctorates from several universities including the University of Hong Kong, the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Taiwan Normal University, De La Salle University and Tel Aviv University.

Mr. Ma graduated from Hangzhou Normal University with a Bachelor of Arts degree in English education.

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Jack Ma's Net-Worth and Influence

What is Jack Ma, founder and former executive chairman of Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. ( BABA ), worth? As of Jun. 21, 2023, Jack Ma's net worth is $34.1 billion as the 39th richest person in the world, according to an article from Bloomberg.

Much of Ma’s wealth is linked to Alibaba. He used to own the largest controlling interest in the company and its subsidiaries, though he has been divesting his shares over time. In July 2020, he sold another $8.2 billion worth of shares. According to the company's 13D filing in February 2022, he now ownes 3.9% of the business.

The firm's roots date back to 1995, when Ma and his wife started a site-creating company called China Yellow Pages. Less than five years later, Ma co-founded Alibaba with 17 friends in Hangzhou.

Alibaba’s holdings now include outright ownership and or important ownership stakes in a movie studio, venture capital funds, Yahoo! China, healthcare technology makers, Internet messaging and voice apps, supply chain management companies, taxi-hailing app services, video streaming sites, social media apps, and online clothing retailers.

Ma stepped down as Chairman of Alibaba on Sept. 10, 2019, on his 55th birthday, as part of a long-standing succession plan.

When a person makes Forbes ’ The World’s Billionaires list, investors are naturally interested in what they're investing in.

Buffet-Style Investing

With a wide array of investments spread out over a number of different companies and sectors, Ma’s web of deals and diversification are often likened to that of Warren Buffett of Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (NYSE: BRK) fame. Ma is a prolific investor who is not shy of financing all stages of a venture, from seed funding to established company. Much of his investing has been done through Yunfeng Capital or various shell companies.

Ma established venture capital firm Yunfeng Capital with four associates in 2010. The five principals came to be known as the “Zhejiang Gang,” referring to the province where they were born. Yunfeng, invests in early-stage companies across a number of industries; almost all of of the companies are located in China . Yunfeng investment sectors include:

• Healthcare (the fund, for example, put 200 million RMB into China Resources Wandong Medical Equipment Co. Ltd. [Shanghai: 600055.SS], a maker of medical devices),
• Insurance ($1.7 billion worth of shares in China Taiping Insurance Holdings Company Limited [HKSE: 0966.HK])
• Clean energy
• Consumer goods
• Finance (with a 56% stake in REORIENT Group Limited (HKSE: 0376.HK), a mid-cap brokerage located in Hong Kong)
• Internet products and services

Private Investments

Not all of Ma's funds are invested in public companies; a large portion of his wealth is invested privately, through various connections and holding companies. One such private equity fund is Star Capital, which invests in a variety of business sectors, including real estate , in China and across Europe. Star Capital is majority-controlled by Fosun International. A major part of Alibaba’s financial services businesses, including Alipay, is overseen by another holding company that is controlled by Ma and other investors.

In 2014, Jack Ma and several other investors put up $1 billion to purchase a 20% stake in Wasu Media, (Shenzhen: 000156.SZ). While this transaction may look fairly straightforward, a closer look at the way the deal was structured revealed a somewhat complex arrangement.

The Hangzhou Yunxi Investment Partnership Enterprise, which made the investment on behalf of its three partners, including Ma, is controlled by three separate entities. One of those, Hangzhou Yun Huang Investment Management, is 99% controlled by Ma, with the other 1% owned by Simon Xie. The $1 billion loan was made to Xie from Alibaba, and then invested into the Yunxi partnership for the purchase of the Wasu shares. Taking a very circuitous route, Ma was investing personally in Wasu, and his appetite for media.

Media, Sports, and Entertainment

The Huayi Brothers (Shenzhen: 300027.SZ) entertainment company, originally formed in 1994, is just one example of Ma's growing interest. Yunfeng, Chinese Internet giant Tencent Holdings Limited (OTC: TCTZF), and Huayi purchased controlling interests in it through an empty shell corporation called China Jiuhao Health Industry Corporation Limited (HKSE: 0419.HK).

In January 2019, Alibaba's Pictures Group (a subsidiary of Alibaba) extended a $1 million loan to Huayi Brothers. In return, Huayi pledged to produce 10 theatrical films over the next five years, giving Alibaba Pictures priority as a potential investor, distributor, and merchandiser.

In 2015, Yunfeng participated in an initial funding round of $129 million for Le TV Sports, a then-fledgling sports rights and streaming company, that went on to secure $1.2 billion in Series B funding in 2016.

Jack Ma's Causes

Ma is a charismatic, flamboyant, and energetic leader, and his influence in business and leadership has been recognized by various organizations. He was named one of the world’s most influential people by Time Magazine in 2009 , Asia’s Heroes of Philanthropy in 2010 by Forbes Asia, and one of 30 world’s best CEO s by Barron’s in 2008.

His influence has transcended business into social causes, primarily environmental ones. Ma has been a board member of The Nature Conservancy in China since 2010. He has taken on the shark fishing industry, pledging to end the consumption of shark fin dishes, and working to bring about the end of trading fins and other shark-based products on Alibaba.

A small (but meaningful in absolute value) percentage of Alibaba’s profits are allocated to fund environmental causes. Ma has also begun sounding the alarm bells (albeit cautiously) on the environmental impact of China's fast-developing industrial economy. He is advocating for China to take steps to further diversify its economy and reduce its reliance on manufacturing.

Ma is an active advocate for women’s fair treatment and advancement in business. Within Alibaba, six of the eighteen founding partners are women, and five of the fourteen executive team members are women. He has asserted, adding proudly, "We have many women CEOs, CFOs , directors and so on."

He also aims to use his influence to encourage and advance fledging business owners. "For the rest of my life, I want to encourage entrepreneurship , to help more small and midsize enterprises ," he has stated. He is also flirting with the idea of returning to his academic roots—he is a graduate of Hangzhou Teacher's Institute —someday. "I want to go back to school because I was trained to be a school teacher," says Ma. "I have been doing business for 15 years, and I think most of the things that I learned from the business school are not correct—I want to go back and share with others."

In 2023, he did return to academia, taking a role as a Visiting Professor at the University of Tokyo, researching sustainable agriculture and food production between May and October 2023.

Expanding Access to Capital Through Alibaba

Ma also suggests that various Alibaba ventures have a philanthropic bent. In 2016, he coined the term "TechFin" as a way to not only set the company's payment platform Alipay apart from its competitors, but to underscore the company's goal of providing young people, small companies, and poor nations access to capital .

He wants Alibaba, already the world's largest e-commerce platform, to also be the go-to financier for emerging markets . And the company's Alipay e-wallet service, which boasts more than 1.3 billion users, is going to serve as the backbone for Ma's payment platform expansion efforts.

“ Fintech takes the original financial system and improves its technology,” said Ma during a 2016 China Conference organized by the South China Morning Post (SCMP). “TechFin is to rebuild the system with technology. What we want to do is to solve the problem of a lack of inclusiveness.”

The South China Morning Post, a publication owned by Alibaba, quoted Ma as saying, "Everyone should have a bank account." To that end, Alibaba’s financial services affiliate Ant Financial Services Group (which manages Alipay) has begun to focus on emerging markets such as India, the Philippines, and Malaysia—areas that are considered underserved, compared to established markets like Europe and the United States.

Ant also runs Yu’E Bao, a  money market fund launched in 2013 that offers higher interest on savings and greater liquidity than many of China's traditional banks.

As for how Alipay and the concept of "TechFin" stands up against existing payment platforms, Ma described his ambition as being less about competition and more about solving a problem. “It’s not a business model competition... getting a business model is simple if you really solve a big problem and create value.”

An article from the South China Morning Post quoted him as saying. “In India, we have over 150 million users who can run mobile payments within 20 months. This [enabling the poor to have bank accounts] is something we feel proud of.”

However, his efforts have faced some headwinds. In 2020, the Indian government banned many Chinese apps, include Alipay Cashier and other apps from Alibaba.

What inspired Jack Ma to start Internet businesses?

Jack Ma's first encounter with the Internet came in 1995 when he visited the United States. He was inspired, and noted the lack of Chinese web sites. He identified this as a business opportunity and founded his first company China Pages, which helped build websites for Chinese businesses.

How many languages does Jack Ma speak?

Jack Ma is bilingual, speaking both Mandarin and English. He took an interest in English at the age of 12, practicing his English with foreign tourists while offering tours of Hangzhou. He also studied to become an English teacher.

What are Jack Ma's work habits?

Jack Ma encourages hard work over long hours. He is a proponent of "996," which means working from 9 AM to 9 PM 6 days a week.

The Bottom Line

Jack Ma is an entrepreneur and founder of one of the largest holding companies in the world and one of the 50 richest people on the planet. That gives him significant influence in his home country of China and abroad. His unique investing style can provide significant insight for investors looking to mimic his success.

Bloomberg. " Bloomberg Billionaires Index ." Accessed Jun. 21, 2023.

Bloomberg. " Bloomberg Billionaires Index #39 Jack Ma " Accessed Jun. 21, 2023.

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Reuters. " Alibaba's Jack Ma, Partners to Pay $1.05 bln for 20% Wasu Media ."

U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. " Alibaba Group Holding Limited Amendment No. 4 to Registration Statement on Form F-1 File No. 333-195736 ."

The Wall Street Journal. " Alibaba Founder's Recent Deals Raise Flags ."

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China Film Insider. " Headlines from China: Huayi Brothers Takes a $103 Million Loan from Alibaba Pictures ."

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As China’s Internet Disappears, ‘We Lose Parts of Our Collective Memory’

The number of Chinese websites is shrinking and posts are being removed and censored, stoking fears about what happens when history is erased.

Chinese people know their country’s internet is different. There is no Google, YouTube, Facebook or Twitter. They use euphemisms online to communicate the things they are not supposed to mention. When their posts and accounts are censored, they accept it with resignation.

They live in a parallel online universe. They know it and even joke about it.

Now they are discovering that, beneath a facade bustling with short videos, livestreaming and e-commerce, their internet — and collective online memory — is disappearing in chunks.

A post on WeChat on May 22 that was widely shared reported that nearly all information posted on Chinese news portals, blogs, forums, social media sites between 1995 and 2005 was no longer available.

“The Chinese internet is collapsing at an accelerating pace,” the headline said. Predictably, the post itself was soon censored.

“We used to believe that the internet had a memory,” He Jiayan, a blogger who writes about successful businesspeople, wrote in the post. “But we didn’t realize that this memory is like that of a goldfish.”

It’s impossible to determine exactly how much and what content has disappeared. But I did a test. I used China’s top search engine, Baidu, to look up some of the examples cited in Mr. He’s post, focusing on about the same time frame between the mid-1990s and mid-2000s.

I started with Alibaba’s Jack Ma and Tencent’s Pony Ma, two of China’s most successful internet entrepreneurs, both of whom Mr. He had searched for. I also searched for Liu Chuanzhi, known as the godfather of Chinese entrepreneurs: He made headlines when his company, Lenovo, acquired IBM’s personal computer business in 2005.

I looked, too, for results for China’s top leader, Xi Jinping, who during the period was the governor of two big provinces. Search results of senior Chinese leaders are always closely controlled. I wanted to see what people could find if they were curious about what Mr. Xi was like before he became a national leader.

I got no results when I searched for Ma Yun , which is Jack Ma’s name in Chinese. I found three entries for Ma Huateng , which is Pony Ma’s name. A search for Liu Chuanzhi turned up seven entries.

There were zero results for Mr. Xi.

Then I searched for one of the most consequential tragedies in China in the past few decades: the Great Sichuan earthquake on May 12, 2008, which killed over 69,000 people. It happened during a brief period when Chinese journalists had more freedom than the Communist Party would usually allow, and they produced a lot of high-quality journalism.

When I narrowed the time frame to May 12, 2008, to May 12, 2009, Baidu came up with nine pages of search results, most of which consisted of articles on the websites of the central government or the state broadcaster China Central Television. One caveat: If you know the names of the journalists and their organizations, you can find more.

Each results page had about 10 headlines. My search found what had to have been a small fraction of the coverage at that time, much of which was published on the sites of newspapers and magazines that sent journalists to the epicenter of the earthquake. I didn’t find any of the outstanding news coverage or outpouring of online grief that I remembered.

In addition to disappearing content, there’s a broader problem: China’s internet is shrinking. There were 3.9 million websites in China in 2023, down more than a third from 5.3 million in 2017, according to the country’s internet regulator.

China has one billion internet users, or nearly one-fifth of the world’s online population. Yet the number of websites using Chinese language make up only 1.3 percent of the global total, down from 4.3 percent in 2013 — a 70 percent plunge over a decade, according to Web Technology Surveys , which tracks online use of top content languages.

The number of Chinese language websites is now only slightly higher than those in Indonesian and Vietnamese, and smaller than those in Polish and Persian. It’s half the number of Italian language sites and just over a quarter of those in Japanese.

One reason for the decline is that it is technically difficult and costly for websites to archive older content, and not just in China . But in China, the other reason is political.

Internet publishers, especially news portals and social media platforms, have faced heightened pressure to censor as the country has made an authoritarian and nationalistic turn under Mr. Xi’s leadership. Keeping China’s cyberspace politically and culturally pure is a top order of the Communist Party. Internet companies have more incentive to over-censor and let older content disappear by not archiving.

Many people have had their online existences erased.

Two weeks ago, Nanfu Wang found that an entry about her on a Wikipedia-like site was gone. Ms. Wang, a documentary filmmaker, searched her name on the film review site Douban and came up with nothing. Same with WeChat.

“Some of the films I directed had been deleted and banned on the Chinese internet,” she said. “But this time, I feel that I, as a part of history, have been erased.” She doesn’t know what triggered it.

Zhang Ping, better known by his pen name, Chang Ping, was one of China’s most famous journalists in the 2000s. His articles were everywhere. Then in 2011, his writing provoked the wrath of the censors.

“My presence in public discourse has been stifled much more severely than I anticipated, and that represents a significant loss of my personal life,” he told me. “My life has been negated.”

When my Weibo account was deleted in March 2021, I was saddened and angered. It had more than three million followers and thousands of posts recording my life and thoughts over a decade. Many of the posts were about current affairs, history or politics, but some were personal musings. I felt a part of my life had been carved away.

Many people intentionally hide their online posts because they could be used against them by the party or its proxies. In a trend called “grave digging,” nationalistic “little pinks” pore over past online writings of intellectuals, entertainers and influencers.

For Chinese, our online memories, even frivolous ones, can become baggage we need to unload.

“Even though we tend to think of the internet as somewhat superficial,” said Ian Johnson, a longtime China correspondent and author, “without many of these sites and things, we lose parts of our collective memory.”

In “ Sparks ,” a book by Mr. Johnson about brave historians in China who work underground, he cited the Internet Archive for Chinese online sources in the endnotes because, he said, he knew they would all eventually disappear.

“History matters in every country, but it really matters to the C.C.P.,” he said, referring to the Chinese Communist Party. “It’s history that justifies the party’s continued rule.”

Mr. Johnson founded the China Unofficial Archives website, which seeks to preserve blogs, movies and documents outside the Chinese internet.

There are other projects to save Chinese memories and history from falling into a void. Greatfire.org has several websites that provide access to censored content. China Digital Times , a nonprofit that fights censorship, archives work that has been or is in danger of being blocked. Mr. Zhang, the journalist, is its executive editor.

Mr. He, author of the WeChat post that went viral, is deeply pessimistic that China’s erasure of history can be reversed.

“If you can still see some early information on the Chinese internet now,” he wrote, “it is just the last ray of the setting sun.”

Li Yuan writes The New New World column, which focuses on China’s growing influence on the world by examining its businesses, politics and society. More about Li Yuan