As a business reporter in Beijing, I met plenty of entrepreneurs who had a good story to tell. But the only one who really lit up a room was Jack Ma.

Jack, as everyone calls him, is a former English teacher who created Alibaba, an e-commerce site that became one of the world’s largest marketplaces. In 2012, I went to Hangzhou to see Jack give a talk to hundreds of suppliers and traders.

To them, Jack was an idol who had graduated from an “average university,” as he put it, and through hard work made his mark on China and the world. He poked fun at himself and at China’s politicians, but didn’t overstep. At least, not at that time. Two years later, Alibaba went public in New York in what was then the largest ever initial public offering.

The fall came in 2020. Just days before Alibaba was to list a new finance arm, regulators blocked the initial public offering. The company was later hit with a $2.8 billion antitrust fine. And Jack abruptly dropped out of sight. He became the latest high-profile entrepreneur to fall out of favor with Beijing’s rulers as part of a tightening of political control on the economy.

Now Jack is back. He’s been spotted in China and around the world, pursuing his personal interest in sustainable fishing and agriculture. He no longer runs Alibaba. But his return to China has been taken by some as a sign that Xi Jinping’s administration may be rethinking how it treats its entrepreneurs as it tries to build a more advanced economy.

As Eswar Prasad, a China specialist at Cornell University, told the Wall Street Journal, “Beijing seems eager to show that prominent entrepreneurs like Jack Ma, once hailed as visionaries and then vilified by the government, are now welcome back in China.”