Forbes China names Alibaba founder Jack Ma country’s most generous entrepreneur in 2020, as tech giants top charity list

Jack Ma, founder of e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding, was the most generous Chinese entrepreneur last year, according to the latest Forbes China list published on Tuesday.

Ma, who retired as Alibaba’s chairman in 2019, has largely faded from public view since a controversial speech in Shanghai last October that was later linked to the Chinese government scuttling the initial public offering of Ant Group, the fintech offshoot of Alibaba also founded by Ma. Since then, he has largely focused on hobbies and philanthropy, his close business partner Joseph Tsai said in an interview last month.

For 2020, Ma and Hangzhou-based Alibaba had combined cash donations of 3.2 billion yuan (US$493.4 million). Pony Ma Huateng and his Shenzhen-based company Tencent Holdings, China’s most valuable technology giant, ranked third with 2.6 billion yuan in charitable giving. Zhang Yiming, together with his Beijing-based company ByteDance, operator of TikTok, came in fifth, donating 1.2 billion yuan for the year, according to the Forbes list.