Jack Ma will step down as president of the elite business academy he founded six years ago, according to people familiar with the matter, as Beijing cracks down on the billionaire’s influence across Chinese society.
Hupan University, an executive training programme that is reputedly as hard to get into as Harvard University, will also restructure its educational programme and has changed its name, the people said.
Ma’s retreat from the academy, located in his home city of Hangzhou, comes as Chinese regulators have piled pressure on the founder of ecommerce group Alibaba and his business empire.
