Hong Kong: As China faces violent protests over its harsh zero-Covid policy, Alibaba founder and billionaire Jack Ma has been spotted in Tokyo, living a quiet and peaceful life amid tech crackdown in his home country, the media reported on Tuesday.
Financial Times reported, citing sources, that Ma and his family are enjoying hot spring and ski resorts in the countryside outside Tokyo amid regular trips to the US and Israel.
“Since his fallout with Chinese authorities, Ma has been spotted in various countries, including Spain and the Netherlands,” the report mentioned.
Ma has reportedly been living in central Tokyo for nearly six months, amid Beijing’s ongoing crackdown on the country’s technology sector.
China’s market regulator in November last year had fined tech giants Alibaba, Baidu, Tencent and e-commerce platform JD.com Inc and Suning for violating the country’s anti-monopoly rules in 34 mergers and acquisition (M&A) deals in which they failed to declare illegal implementation of operating concentration.
Rattled by the alleged data leak of nearly 1 billion residents, the Chinese authorities recently summoned executives and senior technicians from Alibaba Group, after the hacker claimed the data came from Alibaba server.
Alibaba executives were called by Shanghai police as the law enforcement agency suffered one of the biggest data breaches in history.
According to the FT report, Ma has largely disappeared from public view since he criticised Chinese regulators two years ago.
–IANS