Out-of-limelight Ma focuses on hobbies and philanthropy

Alibaba founder Jack Ma Yun is "lying low" and focusing on hobbies and philanthropy, says the e-commerce giant's executive vice chairman and co-founder Joe Tsai Chung-hsin.

Following Ma's criticism of China's regulatory system last year, Beijing came down on the firm, leading to the shelving of affiliate Ant's US$37 billion (HK$288.6 billion) initial public offering and an enforced restructuring of the finance group.

Ma, China's best-known entrepreneur, has been largely out of public view since.

"He's lying low right now. I talk to him every day," Tsai said on CNBC's Squawk Box show.

Ma, who was known for his outspokenness and for pushing boundaries with audacious statements, stepped down from Alibaba in 2019 but continued to loom large in the eyes of investors.

"The idea that Jack has this enormous amount of power, I think that's not quite right," Tsai said. "He is just like you and me, he's a normal individual."

Alibaba was also fined a record US$2.8 billion in April for anti-competitive business practices, amid a wider regulatory crackdown on China's booming "platform economy" based around technology frameworks.

"Our business is under some kind of restructuring on the financial side of things, and also in antitrust regulation. We had to pay a big fine. But we've gotten that behind us, so we're looking forward," Tsai said.

Asked about human rights issues in China, Tsai said a large number of people in the country were happy that their lives are improving.

Shares of Alibaba fell 1.45 percent in Hong Kong after a mainland report said nearly 1.2 billion pieces of private information of Taobao users were stolen. Alibaba said no data has been sold to third parties and there are no economic losses.

A central Chinese court ruled that an employee of a consultant that helps merchants on Alibaba's Taobao online mall was guilty of dredging up more than a billion data items on users since 2019, using that to serve clients. The court imposed jail terms of more than three years on the staff and his employer, alongside fines totaling 450,000 yuan (HK$546,015).

None of the customer data was sold and Alibaba's users did not incur financial losses from the episode, the company said.

The incident however coincides with Beijing's widening effort to tighten the ownership and handling of troves of information that internet giants from Alibaba to Tencent and Meituan hoover up daily from hundreds of millions of users.