Tearful Jack Ma says goodbye to Alibaba with the Rock Star Show
A tearful Jack Ma formally left Alibaba on Tuesday, giving a guitar and a rock star wig at an event for thousands of employees of the e-commerce giant he founded 20 years ago in a small shared apartment in Hangzhou city in eastern China.
During a four-hour celebration at a stadium of 80,000 capacity, Alibaba's billionaire executive chairman transferred his pledge from a year ago to the passing of CEO Daniel Zhang.
Costumed performers, some danced to dubstep music and dressed in traditional Chinese dress, and singers paid tribute to Mr Ma's reputation for dressing up and performing at major events, into a parade of floats representing Alibaba divisions such as the shopping site Tmall and payment service Ant Financial. [1[ads1]9659003] "After tonight, I want to start a new life. I think the world is good, there are so many opportunities, and I love excitement so much, and that's why I retire early," Ma told guests and employees. [19659003] Mr Ma was at one point discovered with tears as staff put on sketches and sang songs, prompting the theme "Jack Ma has been crying" to become a trend on the Chinese social media platform Weibo.
At a farewell event, Jack Ma drew a guitar and a rock star wig
Towards the end during the ceremony, mr. Ma, co-founder Lucy Peng, and CEO of Alibaba's Technology Committee Wang Jian, dressed rock stars in leather jackets and wigs to perform Chinese pop tunes. They were joined by co-founder Joe Tsai dressed in a white Marilyn Monroe-style dress and a blonde wig.
Mr. Zhang, also dressed in rock star clothing, then delivered solo, saying that Alibaba continued to invest in areas such as cloud computing.
Mr Ma's exit comes as Alibaba has grown to become Asia's most valuable listed company, with a market capitalization of $ 460 billion. It employs over 100,000 people, and has expanded to financial services, cloud computing and artificial intelligence.
The company also said on Tuesday that it had adopted six new core values, one of which was a promise to "respect working life balancing decisions from each individual", marking a move from Ma's recent comments and encouraging technology company employees to to work evenings and weekends, which sparked a nationwide debate.
Mr Ma also told attendees that he hoped to see Alibaba shoulder more responsibility for improving society in the midst of the comprehensive changes brought about by technologies such as big data and 5G.
"It is not easy to be a strong company, but it is harder to be a good company," he said. "A strong company is determined by its commercial ability, while a good company is responsible and kind."
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