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One of China's richest men, Jack Ma, is to step down as executive chairman of the Alibaba e-commerce empire on Monday, the New York Times reported.

He will remain on Alibaba's board of directors but focus on philanthropy in education, the newspaper said.

Mr Ma co-founded Alibaba in 1999 and has seen it become one of the world's biggest internet companies.

With a market value of more than $400bn (£309bn), it includes online selling, film production and cloud computing.

In an interview with the Times, but "the beginning of an era", adding: "I love education".

Mr Ma, who will be 54 on Monday, has a net personal wealth of $40bn, making him .

Earlier this week, , following in the footsteps of Microsoft's Bill Gates.

"There's a lot of things I can learn from Bill Gates," he said.

"I can never be as rich, but one thing I can do better is to retire earlier. I think some day, and soon, I'll go back to teaching. This is something I think I can do much better than being CEO of Alibaba."

Mr Ma began his professional life teaching English at a university in the Chinese city of Hangzhou, in eastern Zhejiang province. He started Alibaba from his flat in Hangzhou with a group of friends.