Page 48 - How China Is Winning the Tech Race

Ma also runs Chinese consumer auction site Taoboa.com, modeled after
eBay; Alibaba College, which is dedicated to molding tomorrow’s generation of
entrepreneurs; AliPay, an escrowlike online payment service that works similarly
to PayPal; and Alisoft, a new online business management software for small
companies in China. In August 2007 it added Alimama, an online advertising
platform roughly equivalent to Google’s AdSense ad slot program, to its lineup.
Alibaba’s treasures are not all copycat ideas. Ma introduced AliPay a year
before eBay rolled out PayPal accounts in China. He also launched instant
messaging so that buyers and sellers could get chummy in striking a deal—a
hit in the community-centric online Chinese Web. eBay later borrowed that
idea. This is among the first made-in-China Web features to travel beyond the
country’s borders.
Ask eBay’s Whitman or Yahoo!’s Yang about what a fierce competitor he is.
Ma says he relies on kung fu-like powers of mental concentration and some $107
3
million from big-name investors to upstage both of those tech titans in his
homeland. “When you are small, you use your brain as your strength,” he says.

A trip to Hangzhou

After seeing Ma cast his spell at the San Francisco gatherings, I decided to visit
the Web wizard on his home turf. On my next trip to China a few months
later, I made a side trip from Shanghai to Alibaba headquarters in Hangzhou.
At 6:30 a.m. a car with a driver picked me up at the Shangri-La Hotel in
Shanghai and took me on a day-long visit to Alibaba. We drove for about two
hours, and the whole way, through the skyscrapers, factories, and open land,
the thick smog was always there, making me think of nuclear winter.
Arriving at the city streets of Hangzhou, we made a few U-turns before the
driver dropped me off at Chuangye Mansion, East Software Park. At this six-
story modern office building, Alibaba houses 2,000 of its 3,000 employees. The
lobby shows video displays featuring inspirational clips from Ma. On the upper
floors there are a few dot-com relics: a Ping-Pong table and an orange couch.
But there’s not much lounging here. Workers busily monitor computer trades
and handle customer service queries in 10 rows, each row 6 cubicles long.
The tour ends at Ma’s office, which hosts a fish tank next to the couch
where I’m sitting. He shows up and plops down next to me, hugging a pillow
and complaining of jet lag.

22 SILICON DRAGON