Jack Ma, Co-founder and Executive Chairman of Alibaba Group, announced on September 10th in an open letter that he will retire on September 10th, 2019 (the 20th anniversary of Alibaba). Daniel Zhang, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Alibaba, will take on the new role.  

Ma said on many occasions that teaching is his favorite job and he wants to go back to teaching after retirement. With careful consideration, he had prepared for his resignation 10 ago. Alibaba established a partnership system to solve problems, including large companies' innovation, leadership inheritance, organization responsibility and corporate culture inheritance. Ma has been thinking about how to keep Alibaba growing sustainably after he leaves the company.

Zhang, who will succeed Ma as Executive Chairman next year, has helped Alibaba make performance growth for 13 straight quarters over the past 11 years. Ma said that in the three years since Zhang took over as CEO, Zhang has demonstrated his superb talent, business acumen, strong leadership and unparalleled analytical mind. Ma added that Zhang had led Alibaba achieve long-term development. Ma said that Zhang deserves the title of 'the Best CEO in China.' And it is Ma and Alibaba's partners' best decision to hand over Alibaba to Zhang because of his strategic outlook and capability in culture inheritance. 

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The article is edited by of TMTpost global team.The Chinese article's author is @Xie Kangyu. Please note source and hyperlink when reproduce.

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