The founder of e-commerce giant JD.com, Richard Liu, is the latest Chinese tech CEO to step down from his public leadership role.
These exits come as Beijing cracks down on the sector and a slower economy squeezes margins.
China’s class of billionaire founder-CEOs is feeling the heat.
China’s billionaire class of founding CEOs is feeling the pressure of government control.
Ultra-rich Liu Qiangdong, also known as Richard Liu, is stepping down from his role as chief executive of JD.com, China’s Amazon-like e-commerce giant.
JD.com said Thursday that Liu has stepped down from his role as CEO but will remain as the company’s chairman of the board.
Liu founded JD.com in 1998 — four years after Jeff Bezos founded Amazon — and has a net worth of $13.3 billion, according to Bloomberg’s Billionaires Index.
He joins a growing procession of founding CEOs who are stepping down from their public leadership roles amid a sweeping Chinese government crackdown on its burgeoning tech sector.
In 2020, Zhang Yiming, founder of TikTok owner ByteDance, resigned as CEO and subsequently from his role as chairman. In 2021, Su Hua, founder of TikTok’s main competitor Kuaishou; and Colin Huang, founder of popular e-commerce platform Pinduoduo, all stepped down as CEO.
In 2019, Jack Ma resigned as chairman of Alibaba, JD.com’s main competitor.
All are among the richest people in the world according to Bloomberg, but even their wealth has not escaped Beijing scrutiny. None of the departing founders have publicly cited government pressure as a reason for leaving or changing roles, but their departures all coincide with increasingly aggressive regulation and threats of breakups.
“These founders might say they’re leaving for personal reasons, but that’s too much of a coincidence,” said Naubahar Sharif, a professor at Hong Kong University of Technology and Science who researches China’s technology policy. “The dominant driver is politics and now these old guard have to make way for their successors.”
The story goes on
The central government has targeted labor and consumer rights issues, launched antitrust investigations into tech companies and stepped up oversight over data security.
The uncertainty has weakened investor confidence and hurt corporate earnings. Last month, both Alibaba and social media giant Tencent reported their slowest revenue growth on record. JD.com also posted its first annual loss in three years.
JD.com and others are also laying off thousands of workers.
Liu has generally stayed out of the public eye since he was accused of rape by a student in 2018. US prosecutors dropped the charges against him, citing insufficient evidence. Student Liu Jingyao then filed a civil lawsuit against Richard Liu in the United States in 2019, demanding damages.
Alibaba’s Jack Ma has remained quiet since a dispute with regulators in late 2020 over a possible listing of one of Alibaba’s subsidiaries.
The pressure from Beijing means the founders may be making the only calculation available to them, Sharif said. “Maybe her time in the sun is up? Maybe they should let someone else fill the role that Beijing can work with?” he said.
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