From Alibaba's Jack Ma to JD.com's Richard Liu: Here are China's 'old guard' tech founders who have walked away from leadership roles amid Beijing's tech crackdown

Age: 49

Sector: E-commerce

Year founded JD.com: 1998

Net worth (according to Forbes' World's Billionaires' List): $10.5 billion

Liu, the "Jeff Bezos of China," stepped down as CEO on April 7, according to the company. In a release about Liu's departure, the company said Liu would remain on as chair of the board and "continue to focus on guiding the company's long-term strategies, mentoring younger management, and contributing to the revitalization of rural areas."

Liu created Jingdong — otherwise known as JD.com — as a brick and mortar operation in 1998 in Beijing, selling electronics and computer components. The SARS outbreak in 2003 forced him to move his business online. The company debuted on Nasdaq in 2014, raising $1.8 billion in its IPO.

In addition to the industry-wide crackdown being felt by tech firms in China, Liu has been embroiled in a personal scandal. In 2018, a student at the University of Minnesota accused him of rape. US prosecutors dropped charges against him, citing insufficient evidence. But in 2019, the student, Liu Jingyao, filed a civil claim in the US against Liu.

Age: 39

Sector: Social media

Year founded ByteDance: 2012

Net worth: $50 billion

Zhang, who founded TikTok's parent ByteDance, stepped down as chair in November, six months after leaving his role as CEO. Known to be incredibly private, Zhang said in his resignation note that he's not "social" and lacked the skills to be a good manager.

News of Zhang bowing out from leadership roles at ByteDance came as Beijing scrutinized the company. ByteDance reportedly decided in early 2021 to cancel its planned public listing after authorities wanted the company to address data security risks, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Age: 42

Sector: E-commerce

Year founded Pinduoduo: 2015

Net worth: $11.3 billion=

Pinduoduo is a leader in gamified "group buying," where buyers purchase items such as groceries while playing games, and rope in their friends to do the same to get discounts. Huang described the company in its IPO prospectus as "a mashup of Costco and Disneyland."

Huang left his role as Pinduoduo's CEO in 2020 and stepped down from his role as board chair last March. The company claimed that Huang gave up his chair role to allow new leaders to guide the company in its next stage of growth.

Huang's sudden departure in March 2021 came amid harsh criticism of Pinduoduo's intense work culture. In December 2020, an employee collapsed and died after leaving work at 1:30 a.m. Her death was widely believed to have been caused by overwork. Less than two weeks after, a second employee committed suicide. Pinduoduo did not comment on either death.

After the first death, an employee spoke out against the company's toxic work culture on social media and was subsequently fired, TechNode reported. The company claimed that it terminated the employee because he posted "extreme" comments, the article said.

Age: 40

Sector: Video streaming

Year founded Kuaishou: 2011

Net worth: $11.3 billion

Su stepped down as video-streaming app Kuaishou's CEO last October. Neither Su nor the company gave a reason for his departure, but a press release said Su had "no disagreement with the board." Su was moved into the role of chair of the company's board.

Kuaishou is a competitor to Douyin, TikTok's Chinese-language equivalent, where users can make and watch short videos and livestreams, and shop online.

Su's departure came after Chinese authorities fined Kuaishou and other internet companies in July for sharing sexually suggestive videos of children on their platforms, Bloomberg reported.

Age: 58

Sector: E-commerce

Year founded Alibaba: 1999

Net worth: $22.8 billion

Over two decades, Jack Ma steered Alibaba from a scrappy startup focused on cross-border commerce to a $460 billion empire that touched on e-commerce, financial services, cloud computing, and AI, and employed more than 100,000 people. When Alibaba was listed publicly in New York in 2014, it was the world's largest IPO at $25 billion.

But Ma has, over the years, slowly ceded control over the company. In 2013, he stepped down as CEO but remained the chair of the company's board. In 2019 he stepped down as chair, and finally, in 2020, gave up his seat on Alibaba's board all together.

Despite shedding several of his public leadership roles at Alibaba, Ma still wields considerable control over the conglomerate through his current seat on Alibaba Partnership, a committee that elects the majority of Alibaba's board members.

Ma irked Beijing with his outspokenness throughout the years. In October 2020, he criticized lawmakers by saying existing regulations stifled Chinese tech innovation. He was about to steer Ant Financial, Alibaba's financial payments unit, to another record-breaking IPO when China ordered Ant to scale back to its origins as a payment service. Ant's IPO was then shelved, and Ma retreated from the spotlight. Since then, he's stayed largely out of public view.