Fan Luyuan, chairman and chief executive of Alibaba’s Digital Media and Entertainment Group, admitted he was “out of line” with the remarks, adding that he only wanted to “liven up the atmosphere” during a meeting with the employees of subsidiary Lingxi Games, according to an internal statement posted on Alibaba’s intranet on Saturday.
At the meeting, Fan – a member of the Alibaba Partnership who also serves as chairman and chief executive of Hong Kong-listed Alibaba Pictures – criticised Guangzhou-based Lingxi Games for going “astray under the leadership of the previous management team”.
“I don’t think you had the value system, mission and vision of Alibaba,” he said, adding that employees should re-evaluate what the group stands for.
Fan said the studio failed to innovate beyond hit mobile game Three Kingdoms Tactics or launch other major titles, which weakened the unit’s competitiveness in the past three years. “A game without innovation for five years is nothing,” Fan was quoted by Chinese media as saying.
He was also quoted in reports as saying that Cantonese is a “dialect for barbarians”. Cantonese is widely spoken in the southern province of Guangdong and the autonomous region of Guangxi on the mainland, as well as in Hong Kong and Macau.
