Jack Ma retired because he "wanted to die on the beach instead of in the office"

Jack Ma, co-founder of Asia's most valuable company, caused a stir earlier this week when he announced he would step down as chairman of Alibaba next year, on his 55th birthday.

According toSouth China Morning Post,Jack Ma shares his dissatisfaction with his current busy life and his desire to return to teaching.

Envisioning his retirement, Jack Ma said, "I want to die on the beach, not in my office." He has had a dizzying number of years, even relinquishing his role as Alibaba's CEO and remaining chairman.

“When I left the CEO position (in 2013), I told the executive team that I should spend more time playing golf on the beach. But my gosh! Last year I spent 870 hours on airplanes and this year 1,000 hours,” he said in a 2017 interview.

Although Jack Ma is no longer in charge of Alibaba's day-to-day operations, he remains the company's representative, traveling the world to meet with heads of government and share the benefits of globalization and technology.

Earlier this year, a video of Jack Ma looking exhausted at a conference surfaced online, sitting in the middle of a packed audience at an artificial intelligence forum after attending a public event in Hong Kong at 10 p.m. the night before and meeting with the French prime minister the same morning.

Regrets founding Alibaba

As Alibaba grew into a company on par with Apple, Microsoft and Amazon, Jack Ma shared his mixed feelings. He once said “my biggest mistake was creating Alibaba” because of the enormous pressure and responsibility he had to shoulder to achieve $420 billion, with more than 86,000 employees.

"I just wanted to start a small company and didn't want it to be this big, have to take on so many responsibilities and face so many problems," he said.

“Every day I was as busy as a prime minister and had no energy left. I didn’t have the life I wanted,” Ma said at the St Petersburg International Economic Forum in June 2016.

Jack Ma also confided: "If there is a next life, I will never build such a company. I want to enjoy my life."

Heading a large company requires political awareness, calculation, and maintaining good relations with the government is essential to great success in China.

Passion for teaching

Jack Ma has spoken publicly about his desire to return to teaching. He taught English at a university in Hangzhou after graduating from Normal University in 1988. He always entertained the class with his humorous teaching style and was recognized as one of the 10 outstanding teachers at the school in 1994.

"I have never been trained in commerce, never been an accountant or a programmer. The only thing I do is learn and share. I do business the same way I teach," Jack Ma shared at a conference in November 2017.

The billionaire also often calls himself the "Chief Education Officer" at Alibaba and says he hopes the next generation will follow in his footsteps, just as "a teacher always hopes his students will be better than him."