Alibaba will invest 100 billion yuan (USD15.5 billion) over the next few years into China’s “common prosperity” initiatives, joining a number of technology companies who have decided to put money into President Xi Jinping’s goal to spread wealth.
The e-commerce giant announced that it would put the money into 10 initiatives including technology innovation, economic development, high quality job creation and supporting vulnerable groups.
Alibaba CEO Daniel Zhang said: “Alibaba is a beneficiary of the strong social and economic progress in China over the past 22 years. We firmly believe that if society is doing well and the economy is doing well, then Alibaba will do well.
“We are eager to do our part to support the realisation of common prosperity through high-quality development.”
Premier Xi had called for a “reasonable adjustment of excessive incomes” last month and encouraged high income groups and businesses to “return more to society.”
The Chinese government has introduced strict anti-monopoly laws and Alibaba was the first technology giant to be fined a record 18.2 billion yuan (nearly USD2.8 billion).
Just last week, it announced a law stating that everyone under the age of 18 was allowed a maximum of three hours each week to play online games.
Tencent Holdings, the world’s largest games publisher and Asia’s most valuable company by market capitalisation, earmarked USD7.7 billion last month, following a similar pledge in March towards the fund, which will be used to help lift low-income groups, improve health care coverage, contribute to rural economic development and support grass roots education.
Chen Lei, the chairman and chief executive of e-commerce giant Pinduoduo, said that the firm launched a 10 billion yuan agriculture initiative to help rural residents whose average income was a third that of urban residents.
