Jack Ma’s classmate says Alibaba chairman has been a Communist Party member since his college days
- Interest in the political affiliation of Jack Ma was reignited after he was named in a prospective list of 100 people to be honoured by the Communist Party
Jack Ma, executive chairman of China’s largest e-commerce platform Alibaba, has been a member of the 89.6 million-strong Communist Party since his university days in the 1980s. Alibaba owns the South China Morning Post.
Back then, Ma was in his early 20s and was chairman of the student union at Hangzhou Normal University. He became a Party member in his sophomore or junior year, according to a social media post by one of Ma’s classmates that was widely circulated by news outlets including People’s Daily and Xinhua late on Tuesday.
“At that time, joining the Party not only required hard study, but also integrity, organisational ability, enthusiasm and idealism,” said Ma’s classmate in the post, adding that Ma was “really one in a hundred”.
As student union chairman, Ma spoke a lot about how to help the students in need and organised many activities as “conditions were bitter”, according to the post. They included a talent contest to pick out the 10 best singers and organising hundreds of students to earn extra cash by becoming temporary train conductors during the annual Spring Festival travel period.
The identity of the Weibo poster has not been revealed, although the person says he or she was the chairman of the students union in the chemistry department of the University at the time.