Alibaba Group Holding cofounder Jack Ma (馬雲) is among the world’s richest people, but he has emerged as a member of another club: the 89 million-strong Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
The billionaire’s Communist bona fides were on Monday revealed by the People’s Daily, the CCP’s official mouthpiece, in an article praising contributors to China’s development.
He is not the first nor likely the last Chinese super-rich capitalist to join the party, which counts property titan Xu Jiayin (許家印) and Wanda Group founder Wang Jianlin (王健林) among its billionaire members.
Photo: AFP
However, Ma’s membership had not been known until now, as China’s richest man had previously suggested that he preferred to stay out of politics.
The newspaper said Ma was a CCP member who has played an important role in pushing China’s Belt and Road Initiative — a pet project of Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平).
He has also been honored as one of the “outstanding builders of socialism with Chinese characteristics in Zhejiang Province,” where Alibaba is based, the daily said.
Joining the party can be helpful to businesspeople as they navigate a complicated business environment where the state-led economy dominates many industries and private enterprise can be unwelcome.
Xi has renewed a push to expand the CCP’s influence in private businesses, requiring any company with more than three party members to set up a party cell, or if lacking numbers, join with nearby firms.
Three in four private companies in China already host party organizations.
“We must do a good job in the education and management of party members and guide them to play an active role,” Xi told officials in Shanghai earlier this month, noting the increase in private and new types of employment.
Xi is pushing to further intertwine the CCP and business, with the latest rewrite to the rules for party organizations published on Sunday by the official Xinhua news agency.
The party cells should “guide and supervise the enterprise to strictly abide by national laws and regulations,” the draft order says.
Ma did not reveal his CCP membership in paperwork filed for Alibaba’s 2014 initial public offering on the New York Stock Exchange. It is not known if Ma was a member at the time.
A spokeswoman for Alibaba declined to comment.
Ma — who announced in September that he would step down as head of Alibaba next year — has previously indicated he preferred to keep the Chinese state at arm’s length.
“My philosophy is to be in love with the government, but never marry them,” he said at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, in 2007.
However, party members must hold up their right fist and recite an oath upon joining.
“Be loyal to the party, work actively, fight for communism all one’s life, always be prepared to sacrifice everything for the party and people, and never betray the party,” they recite.
MONEY MATTERS: Xi was to highlight projects such as a new high-speed railway between Belgrade and Budapest, as Serbia is entirely open to Chinese trade and investment Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic yesterday said that “Taiwan is China” as he made a speech welcoming Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to Belgrade, state broadcaster Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) said. “We have a clear and simple position regarding Chinese territorial integrity,” he told a crowd outside the government offices while Xi applauded him. “Yes, Taiwan is China.” Xi landed in Belgrade on Tuesday night on the second leg of his European tour, and was greeted by Vucic and most government ministers. Xi had just completed a two-day trip to France, where he held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron as the
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion