Jack Ma, the Alibaba founder and once the richest business leader in China, has been living in central Tokyo for nearly six months, amid Beijing’s ongoing crackdown on the country’s technology sector and its most powerful businessmen. Ma’s months-long stay in Japan with his family has included stints in hot spring and ski resorts in the countryside outside Tokyo and regular trips to the US and Israel, according to people with direct knowledge of his whereabouts. Ma has largely disappeared from public view since he criticised Chinese regulators two years ago, accusing the state banks of having a “pawnshop mentality” and calling for bold new players that can extend credit to the collateral poor. Since then, both companies he founded, Ant and ecommerce group Alibaba, have faced a series of regulatory obstacles. Chinese regulators called off Ant’s blockbuster $37bn initial public offering and fined Alibaba a record $2.8bn for antitrust abuses last year. His absence from China has coincided with the escalation of President Xi Jinping’s zero-Covid controls this year. This led to a harsh lockdown of Shanghai and the surrounding Yangtze river delta in April and May and sparked nationwide protests over recent days. Ma has a home in Hangzhou, a city near Shanghai where Alibaba is headquartered. Since his fallout with Chinese authorities, Ma has been spotted in various countries including Spain and the Netherlands. Spending less time in his home in China means the billionaire has avoided the tough Covid-19 quarantines imposed on anyone entering the country, as well as thorny political issues arising from his previous push to build influence in the country’s halls of power.