HONG KONG – China’s most famous entrepreneur broke years of silence about Alibaba Group Holding with a call to arms for employees, following years of brutal government punishment and strategic missteps that cost the e-commerce pioneer its place as leader of the country’s tech industry.

Mr Jack Ma, the once-outspoken billionaire who has stayed out of public view after clashing with Beijing, took to an internal message board to urge Alibaba to “correct its course” and lauded rival PDD Holdings, which has been swiping market share. He expressed confidence that the 220,000-plus employees can return to their success of the past with determination and hard work.

“Every great company is born in a winter,” Mr Ma wrote in response to a staff post. “The people willing to reform for the future and the organisations willing to pay any price and sacrifice are the ones that are truly respected.”

Once the most valuable company in China, Alibaba has fallen far behind games and social media leader Tencent Holdings. Alibaba’s market valuation has tumbled from more than US$850 billion (S$1.13 trillion) three years ago to about US$190 billion. It is in danger of being eclipsed by PDD, an e-commerce upstart that reached US$176 billion with a successful expansion abroad.

It is not clear whether Mr Ma has been given explicit approval from the authorities to resume a more public role – or whether he simply could not stay silent any longer about the company’s strategy, given its many problems. Mr Ma ceded his role as chief executive officer before Alibaba’s initial public offering in 2014, leaving day-to-day management largely to his lieutenants since then.

“This intervention is particularly significant, given that we haven’t heard him address anything related to the company for over three years,” said Mr Duncan Clark, author of Alibaba: The House That Jack Ma Built and chairman of investment consulting firm BDA China. “He has always been seen as the ultimate voice, moral authority within the company, including speaking the truth that others dare not.”

The troubles for Mr Ma and Alibaba began three years ago when the entrepreneur publicly criticised Chinese regulators for their oversight of dynamic sectors like finance and technology. Beijing quickly forced Mr Ma to pull the plug on the initial public offering of Ant Group, an Alibaba affiliate that he had also co-founded. Mr Ma then largely disappeared from public view for years, although he was spotted occasionally in locales from a Melbourne hotel to Tokyo members’ clubs.

Mr Ma’s years-long absence underscored the mistrust that entrepreneurs and investors harboured against Beijing – an apprehension that persists despite a litany of official pledges to support the private sector as the world’s No. 2 economy struggles to recover from zero-Covid health curbs.

Beijing targeted Alibaba as part of a broad crackdown on the most powerful companies in the tech industry, pushing them to reform their practices and refrain from leveraging their platforms to dominate emerging businesses. This left Alibaba distracted and struggling to respond to competitive threats from the likes of PDD and ByteDance, the parent of TikTok and Douyin.

In March 2023, chief executive Daniel Zhang unveiled plans to split Alibaba into six different business units, arguing that this would give each division’s management more autonomy and revitalise its operations. Mr Zhang then stepped down and the company handed control over to two longstanding Ma confidants, Mr Joe Tsai and Mr Eddie Wu. The pair soon announced they were shelving the most anticipated spin-off – that of the US$11 billion cloud computing arm – in a stunning reversal that sent the company’s stock reeling yet again.

“The reorganisation was a huge move but the second half of that is, show me who’s running what,” said Mr Jeffrey Towson, a partner at TechMoat Consulting. “Where are the most innovative e-commerce moves coming from? ByteDance and PDD. Who has the next-generation leadership in place? ByteDance and PDD.”

It is unclear where Mr Ma sees the most pressing need for change, but his unusual memo suggests that the co-founder felt the need to address the troops. Mr Ma in November hit the brakes on a plan to reduce his stake in Alibaba as the stock price was not at a level he was happy with.

The comments to the company’s staff are the latest sign that the teacher-turned-entrepreneur is becoming more active after years of staying out of the spotlight, following Beijing’s sweeping crackdown on his businesses. In March, Mr Ma visited a school in Hangzhou in a carefully arranged visit regarded as a sign he was ready to emerge onto a more public stage. He has mostly focused on projects in agriculture and education, among his passions. He recently set up a new company to process and sell farm products, Hangzhou Ma’s Kitchen Food.

Mr Ma’s Alibaba comments came hours after PDD reported stellar financial results. The company, founded by billionaire Colin Huang, surged 18 per cent after reporting a stronger-than-anticipated doubling in revenue, driven in part by the surging success of hit United States shopping app Temu. Alibaba, in contrast, has tried and failed for years to build a truly substantial business outside China.

“Congratulations to Pinduoduo for its decision-making, execution and efforts over the past years,” Mr Ma wrote in his post.

PDD owns Chinese shopping platform Pinduoduo.

Mr Clark noted that Mr Ma’s re-emergence may be an optimistic sign for Alibaba’s future.

“This is a positive development for the company, which clearly needs a reset after its botched spin-off,” he said.

“Perhaps this suggests that the Chinese government is keen to see the company – which symbolised the start of the big tech crackdown – improve its fortunes, now that the priority is clearly shifting to growth, consumption, and restoring investor and private-sector sentiment.” BLOOMBERG