Another blowback for Jack Ma as campus project tanks
Jack Ma, founder of the e-commerce giant Alibaba, is continuing to face backlash from the state after his daring speech in October, as another project bites the dust.
Ma apparently drew the ire of some in the corridors of power for criticizing China’s financial regulations at the financial sector’s Bund Summit on Oct. 24. His words were seen as a direct attack on the Chinese leadership and believed to have cost him the Ant Group’s US$34 million dual IPOs, which were originally slated to launch in November in Hong Kong and Shanghai.
The man has not been seen in public since his speech.
Most recently, the Chinese government pulled the plug on building a campus for Hupan University in Kunming, Yunnan province, where Ma would have taken the role of president.
Hupan University, a training ground for entrepreneurs, has just celebrated its fifth anniversary. It is the brainchild of a group of businesspeople and academics, including Liu Chuanzhi, founder of the world’s largest computer maker Lenovo; Fosun International Limited chairperson Guo Guangchang; and Ma. The university says it is committed to “training entrepreneurs with a pioneering spirit,” and requires all of its students to be entrepreneurs with at least three years of running a startup. The average age of students is 38.
The massive campus project was announced by the state in August and was to be fully funded by the government. Plans were for the campus to consist of roughly 903 hectares of building on 1,281 hectares of land. The project opened for building bids in the beginning of the month, but the whole thing was pulled nine days later.
Hupan is not considered a higher education institution nor a training school. It is registered as a private non-enterprise. In the past five years, 11,788 people had applied to the university and 251 were enrolled.
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