Page 45 - How China Is Winning the Tech Race

CHAPTER TWO

Not even Harry Potter’s author could come up with a tale as magical as Jack Ma’s. He rose
from the ashes of the Cultural Revolution to head China’s best known Web business, Alibaba,
and created a template for running an American brand offshore. This is the story of a
hometown boy who beat the global champions Yahoo! and eBay, with some accusations of
dirty tricks mixed in along the way. Ma’s biggest milestone came in late 2007, when Alibaba
went public.

Alibaba—
The Wizardry of Jack Ma

t a recent Asia Society dinner
A at the stately Palace Hotel in
downtown San Francisco, the keynote
speaker, Jack Ma, wowed the crowd.
Interviewed by a local television an-
chor, the stick-thin Chinese entre-
preneur spoke in pithy sound bites.
He had the politicos, investors, and
executives forgetting their petits fours
as they listened to his captivating tale
of an improbable rise to wealth and
power. “I’m like the blind man riding on the back of a blind tiger,” said Ma,
a former English-language teacher who heads up the Alibaba Group. Alibaba
is a Chinese Internet powerhouse bootstrapped by Ma that not too long ago
was on the edge of bankruptcy. “Alibaba might as well be known as ‘1,001
mistakes,’” he added. “But there were three main reasons why we survived:
We didn’t have any money, we didn’t have any technology, and we didn’t have
a plan,” said Ma in fluent English and with an actor’s perfect timing.
Ma is one of the few Chinese Internet entrepreneurs who has joined the
global tech elite. He regularly speaks alongside business luminaries Jack

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