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Billionaire Alibaba founder Jack Ma touring Dutch research institutes-SCMP
Published by maria gbaf
Posted on October 27, 2021
2 min readLast updated: January 29, 2026
Global Banking & Finance Review®
Company
Published by maria gbaf
Posted on October 27, 2021
2 min readLast updated: January 29, 2026
Jack Ma, Alibaba founder, explores Dutch agri-tech to modernize Chinese agriculture, following regulatory scrutiny in China.
HONG KONG (Reuters) – Alibaba Group founder Jack Ma has been touring Dutch research institutions to pursue his interests in agriculture technology, Hong Kong newspaper South China Morning Post (SCMP)reported, quoting people familiar with his trip.
The Chinese billionaire has largely been out of public view since he publicly criticised China’s regulatory system in a speech last year. His empire promptly came under heavy scrutiny from regulators and the $37 billion blockbuster IPO of his fintech affiliate Ant Group was suspended.
Ma, once China’s most famous and outspoken entrepreneur, reappeared in Hong Kong in October, where he met at least “a few” business associates over meals, two sources told Reuters.
He then flew to the Spanish island of Mallorca, where his luxury yacht is anchored, his first trip abroad since he fell out with Chinese regulators, two Spanish newspapers reported last week.
SCMP, owned by Alibaba, published three photos of Ma, sourced as handouts and dated Oct. 25.
In two of them he was seen wearing a white protective gown and holding flowerpots, while in the third he was wearing jeans and a hoodie and the caption said he was analysing technology by aluminium extrusion specialist BOAL Systems.
The billionaire, who retired as Alibaba’s chairman in 2019, will continue touring European companies and research institutions involved in agricultural infrastructure and plant breeding, according to people familiar with his plans, 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 told SCMP.
On Sept. 1, photographs 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.
(Reporting by Donny Kwok; Editing by Lincoln Feast.)
The article discusses Jack Ma's exploration of agriculture technology in the Netherlands and his plans to modernize Chinese agriculture.
Jack Ma is in the news for touring Dutch research institutes to explore agriculture technology amid scrutiny from Chinese regulators.
Jack Ma plans to use technology from his research tours to modernize Chinese agriculture with Alibaba's cloud computing and AI.
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