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Jack Ma will step down as president of the elite business academy he founded six years ago, according to people familiar with the subject, while Beijing represses the billionaire’s influence in Chinese society.
Hupan University, an executive training program that is supposedly as difficult to introduce as Harvard University, will also restructure its educational program and has changed its name, according to people.
Ma’s withdrawal from the academy, located in his hometown of Hangzhou, comes as Chinese regulators have amassed pressure on the founder of e-commerce group Alibaba and his business empire.
Ma, one of the most prominent businessmen in the country, has largely disappeared from public view since he delivered a speech in October criticizing state regulators and banks.
Antitrust regulators fined Alibaba a record $ 2.8 billion fine for monopolistic internships last month and has been ordered to Ant Group, Ma’s fintech company reduce your business and restructure from his Initial public offering of $ 37 billion he was crushed last November.
The changes in Hupan suggest that Beijing’s effort to limit Ma’s influence continues despite the entrepreneur making a public appearance at an Alibaba event this month.
A person close to Hupan said Ma would not have any high-level official title in the restructured organization. But several people warned that Ma was eager to stay connected to the school and that she could give lectures in the future.
Authorities were worried that Ma would build a powerful network in Hupan that could thwart the Communist Party’s goals, according to a person close to the school. Some senior Chinese officials view Hupan as a modern version of the Donglin Academy, a 17th-century educational institution that served as a forum for debate for thinkers who influenced politics and weakened the Ming dynasty government.
Hupan was created to teach a select group of entrepreneurship, business management and corporate culture. “We want Hupan to work for 300 years,” Ma said in 2015, when he welcomed the first group of students.
Last week, Hupan changed its name to its website and social media accounts at Hupan Innovation Center. Videos on Chinese social media also showed a worker using a blower to remove the name from Hupan University from a large stone sign in front of his campus.
The name change fits into a government campaign to ensure that only authorized educational institutions can use the title of “university”. Hupan is not an official university.
A social media account called Xiake Island run by the People’s Daily, the Communist Party’s flagship newspaper, harshly criticized Hupan and his students on Thursday.
China has 1,186 “universities” of companies, Xiake’s post said. “Hupan University is actually a private non-business organization, not an educational institution that awards degrees,” the message adds, noting that “students” who attend these places really want to “join a group, establish connections and obtain resources ”.
He also criticized Hupan’s role in fostering a peer group that supported a Hupan student while his company was under scrutiny by authorities.
“Ma has to break away from the organization, but there are concerns that Hupan may have trouble attracting students if Ma leaves completely,” one person said. “The academy is popular for him, not for his curriculum.”
A profile picture of Ma on the Hupan website has been changed to a classroom image.
The Financial Times reported last month, the school suspended enrollment for its new group of freshmen.
Alibaba forwarded questions to Hupan, who did not respond to repeated requests for comment.
Additional reports from Nian Liu in Beijing
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