Jack Ma, the head of e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding Ltd and China\u2019s best-known capitalist, is a Communist Party member, the official Party newspaper said on Monday, debunking a public assumption the billionaire was politically unattached.<\/p>\n
The People\u2019s Daily revealed Ma\u2019s Party membership in a list of 100 people it said had helped drive the country \u201creform and opening up\u201d process. Ma is China\u2019s richest man with a fortune of $35.8 billion, according to Forbes.<\/p>\n
It was unclear why the paper chose to mention Ma\u2019s affiliation now but it comes amid a push by Beijing to bring the country\u2019s private enterprises more in line with Party values, especially in the technology sector that has grown rapidly, driven by the successes of private firms.<\/p>\n
Ma, who announced in September he would step down as Alibaba chairman next year, is China\u2019s highest-profile business leader. He has acted as an adviser to political leaders in Asia and Europe and fostered big ambitions in the United States.<\/p>\n
He has driven Alibaba to become a $390 billion giant, which dominates China\u2019s online retail market, stretches from logistics to social media, and has spawned a separate fintech empire around popular payment platform Alipay.<\/p>\n
Results from domestic search engine Baidu Inc, when asked \u201cis Jack Ma a Communist Party member\u201d, also mostly said that he was not.<\/p>\n
Alibaba declined to comment on Ma\u2019s Party membership, but said political ties did not impact the firm\u2019s operations.<\/p>\n
\u201cPolitical affiliation of any executive does not influence the company\u2019s business decision-making process,\u201d a spokesperson said in emailed comments to Reuters on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe follow all laws and regulations in countries where we operate as we fulfil our mission of making it easier for people to do business anywhere in the digital era.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Jack Ma, the head of e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding Ltd and China\u2019s best-known capitalist, is a Communist Party member, the official Party newspaper said on Monday, debunking a public assumption the billionaire was politically unattached. The People\u2019s Daily revealed Ma\u2019s Party membership in a list of 100 people it said had helped drive the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":48418,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[410],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-48417","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48417","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=48417"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48417\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":48419,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48417\/revisions\/48419"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/48418"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48417"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48417"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48417"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}