Jack Ma, Alibaba founder.

Asian Tech Press (Oct 13) -- Chinese billionaire Jack Ma, the founder of Alibaba, rarely seen since a regulatory crackdown on his business empire last year, appeared recently in Hong Kong, Reuters reported on Tuesday.

Ma met with at least "a few" business associates over meals last week, the report said, citing people familiar with the matter.

And one of the sources said it was Ma's first visit to Hong Kong since last October.

And Ma's latest appearance in public was on Sept. 1, when he visited several farm sheds in Jiaxing, Zhejiang province, where he appeared to be inspecting Alibaba's digital agriculture base.

The Chinese billionaire's speech at the Bund Summit in Shanghai in October 2020, criticizing China's financial regulators, riggered a chain of events that hammered his business empire.

The world's largest IPO by Jack Ma's Ant Group, which planned to raise about $34.4 billion, was called off urgently in late 2020 and Alibaba was fined 18.228 billion yuan ($2.8 billion) by Chinese regulators in early April for allegedly committing "two-choose-one" antitrust practices.

Since his controversial speech last October, Ma has kept a low profile, rarely appearing in public and also absent from this year's Wuzhen Summit.