Jack Ma praised a key rival. A day later, it overtook Alibaba as China's most valuable e-commerce company.

• Temu's parent company, PDD Holdings, is currently more valuable than Alibaba.
• PDD's market cap overtook Alibaba a day after Jack Ma praised the rival ecommerce upstart.
• PDD's market cap is nearly $185 billion, while Alibaba's market cap is nearly $184 billion.

Chinese tech giant Alibaba hasn't had the easiest time in the past three years.

Alibaba — and its larger-than-life cofounder, Jack Ma — dominated the Chinese e-commerce sector for over a decade.

But in late 2020, Ma disappeared from public view after he criticized Chinese regulators. Since then, the company's stock has come under tremendous pressure, losing more than three-quarters of its value since hitting its peak in October 2020.

Now, the market value of rival company PDD — the parent company to Temu — has surpassed that of Alibaba.

PDD's market cap is nearly $185 billion, while Alibaba's market cap is nearly $184 billion.

The watershed moment came a day after Ma acknowledged PDD's rise on November 28.

In a post on an internal Alibaba forum, Ma congratulated PDD and commended its strategic decisions. He also called on Alibaba employees to rise to industry challenges.

"Everyone can be successful. But only those willing to reform for the sake of tomorrow, and the day after that, and an organization willing to make any sacrifice needed, are considered respectable," wrote Ma.

In November 2020, Alibaba shelved a planned $37 billion IPO for its affiliate fintech firm Ant Group. A month later, state regulators launched an antitrust probe that culminated in a record $2.8 billion fine.

In May, Alibaba announced that it was splitting into six smaller entities — but it dropped plans to spin off its $11 billion cloud business in November, tanking the company's stock price.

Alibaba's shares in Hong Kong were down 2.6% to 68.65 Hong Kong dollars, or $8.79, apiece at 2:37 p.m. local time on Monday.

Alibaba's shares on the New York Stock Exchange closed 0.26% lower at $72.14 apiece on Friday. The stock is down 18% so far this year.

PDD's share price closed 0.95% lower at $138.96 apiece on Friday. The stock is up 70% year-to-date.