First published March 19, 2020.
In March 2020, as COVID-19 spread across Europe and North America, Alibaba co-founder Jack Ma and his foundations announced large donations of medical supplies. Europe was promised two million masks, with the first deliveries routed through Liège Airport in Belgium to Italy, Spain, Belgium and other countries. On 13 March 2020 the Jack Ma Foundation also pledged 500,000 coronavirus test kits and one million masks for the United States. Separately, Ma's foundation funded vaccine research, including an AU$3.2 million award to the Peter Doherty Institute in Melbourne.
Jack Ma, co-founder of Alibaba, alongside the logo of the Jack Ma Foundation (马云公益基金会), which together with the Alibaba Foundation organised the 2020 shipments.
Below is a clear breakdown of what was given, where it went, and how the pledges fit into the wider story of pandemic aid in early 2020.
Where the masks for Europe went
The two foundations used Liège Airport as their European gateway. The airport was already being developed as Alibaba's logistics hub for e-commerce through its Cainiao arm, and Belgium was the first European partner of the Alibaba-led Electronic World Trade Platform.
According to Alizila, Alibaba's own news site, the deliveries in March 2020 included:
- Italy: 500,000 surgical masks flown from Hangzhou through Liège to Rome and received by the Italian Red Cross, with another 500,000 masks and 100,000 test kits due the following week, for distribution through more than 1,000 Red Cross branches. The boxes reportedly carried lyrics from the aria "Nessun Dorma".
- Belgium: 300,000 medical masks arrived at Liège on 16 March and went to Sciensano, the national public health institute, for frontline staff.
- Spain: an initial 500,000 masks flew from Shanghai to Zaragoza, with test kits to follow.
- Later flights: supplies for France, Slovenia, Austria, Denmark, Germany, Ireland, the Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland, Norway, Portugal and the UK, eventually including protective clothing and ventilators.
The Italian Red Cross president, Francesco Rocca, said the emergency had revealed "the power of international solidarity, both from institutions and companies".
The pledge to the United States
Ma's US pledge was unusual because it was the first post on his new Twitter account. The foundation announced on 13 March 2020 that it would send 500,000 testing kits and one million masks, and on 16 March Ma posted photos of the first shipment being loaded onto a plane in Shanghai. He argued that fast, accurate testing and enough protective equipment for medical workers were the most effective tools against the virus, ending with "United we stand, divided we fall!"
The timing mattered. In mid-March 2020 the US was struggling with a shortage of test capacity and protective equipment, and a donation of that size from a Chinese entrepreneur drew wide attention at a moment of political tension between the two countries.
Earlier support for vaccine research
The mask shipments were not Ma's first pandemic donation. Around the end of January 2020, the Jack Ma Foundation reportedly announced 100 million yuan (roughly US$14.5 million at the time) for coronavirus vaccine and treatment research, part of it going to Chinese research institutions.
The foundation also funded research abroad. The University of Melbourne reported that the Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity received AU$3.2 million, about US$2 million at the time, to accelerate work towards a COVID-19 vaccine. Some reports at the time quoted a much larger figure of $12.5 million; the recipient's own announcement gives AU$3.2 million. The Doherty Institute, named after the Australian Nobel laureate Peter Doherty, was one of the first labs outside China to grow the virus from a patient sample, in January 2020, which made its work valuable to researchers worldwide.
The foundations' aid also reached Japan, South Korea and Iran, and test kits and protective equipment were sent to African countries, including Rwanda.
How to read big donation announcements
Pandemic aid in 2020 was often reported in a way that blurred three different things: a pledge, a shipment and actual use in hospitals. A few habits help when reading stories like this one:
- Separate the pledge from delivery. An announcement tells you what was promised; shipment records and recipient statements tell you what arrived.
- Check the recipient's own statement. Red Cross societies, health ministries and universities often publish what they received, which is the most reliable figure.
- Watch currencies. Yuan, Australian dollars and US dollars were often mixed together in headlines, which is how errors creep in.
- Remember quality checks. In spring 2020 several countries reported faulty tests or masks from various suppliers, so receiving authorities usually checked donated equipment before using it. We found no specific report of problems with these donations.
Who Jack Ma is
Jack Ma, a former English teacher from Hangzhou, co-founded Alibaba in 1999 as a business-to-business online marketplace. It grew into one of the world's largest e-commerce and technology groups, with businesses spanning online shopping, cloud computing and, through its affiliate Ant Group, digital payments. Ma announced in 2018 that he would step down as executive chairman to focus on philanthropy and education, retired as chairman in September 2019, and left Alibaba's board in October 2020.
The figures quoted in March 2020, a company value of around $420 billion and a personal fortune of about $37 billion, were snapshots from that time. Both have changed since; Forbes estimates have been considerably lower in recent years.
What happened to Ma after 2020
Months after the donations, Ma's public profile changed sharply. After a speech in October 2020 criticising financial regulators, the Shanghai Stock Exchange suspended Ant Group's planned stock market listing on 3 November 2020, citing financial stability concerns. Ma then made no public appearances for several months, prompting widespread speculation, before reappearing in a video on 20 January 2021. He has since kept a much lower profile, reportedly spending long periods abroad.
His foundations' 2020 aid campaign remains one of the larger private responses to the first wave of the pandemic, delivered at a time when masks and tests were hard to find almost everywhere.
Sources: Alizila: Jack Ma Foundation and Alibaba Foundation ramp up coronavirus aid to Europe; Fierce Biotech: Jack Ma to ship 500k COVID-19 test kits to the US; University of Melbourne: Doherty Institute awarded AU$3.2 million; Wikipedia: Jack Ma.
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