Jack Ma: From Hangzhou to the World
Editor’s Note: As one of the Chinese cities with the most dynamic economic development, historic Hangzhou has become a major innovation hub in recent years. The traditional yet trailblazing city has fostered a wealth of talent. In this issue, China Pictorial trains its lenses on eight representative Hangzhou residents. Their lives are closely tied to Hangzhou, and their stories reflect the ancient city’s fusion of tradition and modernity as well as its cultural charm.
The first entrepreneur from the Chinese mainland to appear on the cover of Forbes, Jack Ma has been a cutting-edge entrepreneur. ICHangzhou native Jack Ma is undoubtedly one of the biggest stars and successful entrepreneurs of China’s internet. The founder and chairman of Alibaba Group, 52-year-old Ma established the company in Hangzhou in 1999 along with 17 partners. The company has become the largest internet company in the world, with operations in e-commerce, financial services, studio entertainment, and cloud computing. Competition in global internet and e-commerce is fierce, and innovation clearly plays a major role.
Since the founding of Alibaba, Ma’s innovation in many realms has been eye-catching. Instead of big companies, Ma made small and medium-sized businesses his target from the very beginning. “If you look at enterprises as rich versus poor, the internet is home of the poor,” he says. “Big companies have their own information channels and spend huge on advertisements, while small enterprises have nothing, which makes them most reliant on the internet.”
Alibaba has successfully implemented innovation new business models thanks to Ma. In July 2003, Alibaba launched taobao. com. Earlier, China’s first consumer-to-consumer company, EachNet, had already been around for more than four years. EachNet was acquired by American e-commerce giant eBay, strengthening its influence. However, the company EachNet gave greater priority to its overseas strategy while neglecting the Chinese market, resulting in a massive loss of customers. At the same time, taobao. com became more attractive to buyers and sellers alike, thanks to its bold innovations in many aspects, including eliminating fees for opening shops, facilitating direct communication between buyers and sellers, strengthening membership services, and launching online payment tools. Soon, it dwarfed EachNet.
After taobao.com’s initial success, Ma continued innovating elsewhere. In 1999, his company entered into the financial sector, providing loans and credit guarantees to small and micro businesses. In 2014, Ant Financial, a spin-off of Alibaba’s former financial arm, was officially launched. Aiming to create a new and open financial ecosystem, it primarily serves small and micro-sized enterprises and individual consumers. The move marked Alibaba’s full immersion into the financial sector. In April 2016, Ali Health, Alibaba’s healthcare subsidiary, announced it would co-establish the Ali Health Insurance Company with enterprises such as China Taiping Insurance Group and Taiping Life Insurance Company, marking its reach to the sector of health insurance.
Ma believes that investor confidence in his company and his leadership should be attributed to large part to optimism for China’s future high-speed economic growth. Alibaba is closely bound to China’s real economy. For China, amidst foreign trade structural transformation and retail industry revolution, every innovation could be a growth point.
August 3, 2016: Jack Ma with rural teachers and headmasters at Xiaohewan Primary School, Xiayun Township, Anshun City. In recent years, Ma placed greater focus on other realms. CFP