Meanwhile, officials in Zhengzhou announced an "orderly" resumption of businesses. Zhengzhou is home to a Foxconn factory that makes iPhones.

China also said Tuesday it would do more to vaccinate China's elderly population. About 90% of China's total population is fully vaccinated. For those 80 and older, 65.8% are fully vaccinated but only 40% have received a booster.

BABA, along with JD.com (JD), didn't release specific gross merchandise volume for its Nov. 11 Singles Day, the world's biggest annual shopping event. Alibaba did say that volume was comparable to last year, when the company reported gross merchandise volume of $84.5 billion, up more than 8% from the year-ago period. But that was a sharp slowdown from 26% growth in 2020.

Sentiment was weak around Chinese stocks in October after the Biden administration announced new restrictions on China's access to U.S. semiconductor technology, including restrictions on the exports of some types of chips used in supercomputing and artificial intelligence. It also imposed tighter rules on the sale of chip equipment to China.

Alibaba stock rallied sharply in late August on reports that Beijing and U.S. regulators were close to an audit-inspection deal.

In late July, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission added Alibaba to a list of Chinese firms at risk of being delisted for not opening their books to U.S. accounting regulators.

Alibaba stock jumped on June 17 but pared early gains after Reuters reported that China's central bank accepted Ant Group's application to set up a financial holding company.

In early November 2020, Chinese authorities suspended the $34.5 billion Ant Group IPO in Shanghai and Hong Kong. Ant Group is the fintech arm of Alibaba. The decision to suspend the IPO came after Shanghai exchange officials said the exchange would halt the listing due to the company's inability to fulfill conditions amid changes in the regulatory environment.

As part of its Nov. 17 earnings report, which showed adjusted profit up 5% year over year to $1.82 a share but revenue down 6% to $29.1 billion, BABA said it's increasing its share buyback program by $15 billion, on top of an existing $25 billion program. As of Nov. 16, the company said it already repurchased $18 billion worth of stock under its existing program.

In early August, Alibaba reported fiscal first-quarter revenue of $30.7 billion, down nearly 4% from the year-ago quarter but slightly above the consensus of around $30 billion. Adjusted profit of $1.75 a share was also above the $1.58 consensus.

Alibaba's China commerce segment fell 1% to $21.19 billion. Alibaba's cloud segment did revenue of $1.59 billion, up 10% year over year.

Increased regulatory scrutiny has weighed on Alibaba and other Chinese stocks for the past couple of years. Besides a strict regulatory environment, Chinese stocks are also dealing with a slowing economy, Covid shutdowns, supply-chain issues and inflation.

In April 2020, China regulators fined Alibaba $2.8 billion after an antimonopoly probe. At the time, it looked like BABA stock was ready to break out of a downtrend. But the stock got turned away at its 50-day moving average. It tried to rally above the 50-day line again in late April but sellers knocked the stock lower again.

BABA stock crashed another 8% on Nov. 10 after Chinese regulators announced new draft antimonopoly rules for China online platforms like Alibaba and JD.com, among others.

Alibaba soared 10% on Dec. 6 on news of a management shakeup and an overhaul of its ecommerce business. Maggie Wu departed as chief financial officer in April. Her replacement, Toby Xu, joined Alibaba in July 2018 and was appointed deputy chief financial officer in July 2019.

Alibaba also announced plans to restructure its ecommerce operations by forming two new digital commerce divisions, focused on international and domestic markets.

Meanwhile, investor reaction was tepid to the company's Investor Day on Dec. 16-17. Soon after, BABA stock slumped nearly 4% on Dec. 22 after China's IT regulator disciplined the company for not reporting an open-source security vulnerability to the government.