Page 46 - How China Is Winning the Tech Race

Welch, Rupert Murdoch, and Alan Greenspan in Asia, Europe, and the
United States. He’s played host to former U.S. president Bill Clinton at a
China Internet Summit. His business maneuvers one-upped both Yahoo! CEO
Jerry Yang and eBay CEO Meg Whitman when he acquired Yahoo! China
and stole market leadership from the popular auction site eBay. He also beat
Bo Shao, the Harvard MBA and Chinese founder of Eachnet, a knockoff of
eBay in China.
Today, Ma runs both the world’s largest online business-to-business mar-
ketplace and Asia’s most popular Internet auction site. Now that Alibaba
operates Yahoo! China, he’s running 2 of the top 10 sites on the Mainland.
He recently took the Alibaba.com portion of the company public, which
chalked up 2006 revenues of $184 million, on the Hong Kong stock exchange
in early November 2007. The initial public offering (IPO) raised $1.5 billion
and shares nearly tripled on the opening day, though tumbled by 17 percent
a day after the debut. Analysts predicted a further fall and cautioned that the
stock was overvalued, at more than 200 times forecast earnings for 2007.
How well an independent-minded, creative thinker like Ma will fare in
dealing with the stringent requirements of running a public company is ques-
tionable, points out Jeremy Goldkorn, publisher of the Chinese media site
Danwei in Beijing. “With a charismatic big boss like Ma, you worry if they
will be able to handle it once they go public.”
But in San Francisco, Ma’s energy radiated throughout the ballroom before
a spellbound audience. He showcased the high-quality tech leadership skills
emerging in China today after decades of communist repression. “Tech lead-
ership will shift to China, and Ali-
baba will become a world-leading
“With a charismatic big boss like Ma, you company,” declared a supercon-
worry if they will be able to handle it once fident Ma.
they go public.” “He is a good example of the
great ideas and strong management
Jeremy Goldkorn,
that are emerging today in China,”
publisher, Danwei
said Yahoo! CEO Jerry Yang, who
accompanied Ma at the dinner
event and a conference of the high-
level Committee of 100 Chinese group the next week at San Francisco’s Four
Seasons Hotel. “This new generation of Chinese entrepreneurs with a more

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