Beijing Tech Crackdown: Richard Liu, billionaire founder of JD.Com, steps down as CEO

Beijing has been checking different companies' business practices and revising and tightening domestic technology industries' rules. This has led to many high-profile tech bosses stepping down from their roles in the companies, the latest being Richard Liu, founder of JD. COM. The president of the company XU Lei will join the board of directors now as the new CEO.

Surprisingly, this is the second time the management is seeing a reshuffle in the last seven months. Xu Lei was heading the retail business of JD.COM, and only last September he became the president of the company.

However, JD CEO Liu will continue to be the chairman of the board of the company. And, from 2018, he was not much involved with the company as someone accused him of rape, though he denied this.


This comes after some of the technology executives had resigned from their roles in the last year few years. Pinduoduo, one of the fastest-growing eCommerce companies, saw its founder and chairman Colin Huang's stepping down. Also, Kuaishou, a short video app's cofounder, resigned.

From antitrust to protection of data, Beijing is following strict rules and punishing all the companies for not following the rules.

As per the report published by JD.COM, Richard Liu now will concentrate on all the long-term strategies of the company. Besides that, he will monitor the younger management so that they become experts in their roles.

His other job will be to revitalize the rural areas. Xi Jinping, the president of China, is majorly focusing on developing the rural areas through his campaign for common prosperity so that all the people living in the hinterland can have moderate wealth for themselves.