Sparkling Ideas From Jack Ma and His Ambition On a Davos Talk

(YicaiGlobal) Jan.21 — On the Davos forum, Jack Ma accepted the interview from CNBC’s journalist Andrew Ross Sorkin and his excellent eloquence against sharp questions impressed the audiences, particularly when he was asked about if China is stealing job from the U.S.

Jack Ma replied like this:

“American international companies made millions and millions of dollars from globalization.”

“In the past 30 years, America had 13 wars spending $14.2 trillion. What if they spend part of the money on building infrastructure, helping the white collars and blue collars? No matter how good your strategy is you’re supposed to spend money on your own people.”

“The money goes to Wall Street. Then what happened? Year 2008 wiped out $19.2 trillion in US income … What if the money was spent on the Midwest of the United States?”

“It’s not that other countries steal American jobs. It is your strategy – that you did not distribute the money in a proper way.”

American Media immediately took aggressive actions on Jack Ma’s saying.

1. Meeting With Donald Trump?  

“One day I got a request from some people: ‘Jack do you want to meet the president-elect?’ I said, ‘Is that true? I’m not ready for that, ’cause I don’t know what to talk about.’ And then a few days later, I got another request. I got several requests. I thought about it. I think, yes, maybe I should go and have a talk. At least I think President-elect Donald Trump would be happy to hear what I talk about, so I went.”

2. China’s Leadership 

“The world needs a new leadership. But the new leadership is about working together. This is what I understand. We do not necessarily need one specific leader to teach us what to do, what not to do.”

“As a businessperson, I want the world to share the prosperity together, to join the force together. As a Chinese, I’m happy about what he committed. This is the first time I heard a Chinese leader putting a number on the commitment. This makes me excited because China is transforming from exporting to importing. If there’s a concrete number, if we could fulfill it, this is going to be a huge change to China and to the world.”

3. Business Empire

“I hope both are right. And because the world can never have one mode. If the world has only one correct mode, the world’s too boring. We need to have all kinds of modes. And the people who do the mode should believe the mode. And I believe what I do.”

“Amazon is more like an empire. Everything they control themselves, buy and sell. And our philosophy is that we want to be an eco-system. Our philosophy is to empower others to sell, empower others to serve, to make sure the other people are more powerful than us. Our philosophy is that we think using internet technology, we can make every company become Amazon.”

“We made same-day delivery possible in 125 cities last year. Imagine 10 years ago, deliver one thing from Beijing to Hangzhou took about 8 days. Now you can deliver things from Beijing to Inner Mongolia, some cities within 12 hours. It’s improving. You can never expect these things to happen within 24 hours. We have patience.”

“This is what we feel proud of. It’s not how much money we made, it’s not how powerful we are, it’s that we can make technology very inclusive. Every small company can use it. This is my dream.”

4. Alibaba’s Copyright Infringement

“As an e-commerce, when you have 10 million small business, and empower them to sell, you cannot check every product like Amazon does. So e-commerce itself may have a lot of flaws.“

“In the past 17 years, we are the leader in anti-piracy issues. With big progress last year alone, we put 400 people in jail. We deleted 370 million fake products off our site.”

“Fighting against fake products is the war against human greediness. It is not easy. You can not finish it, but you have to continue to fight.”

5. Ambition in the Entertainment World

“Five years ago, we had a big debate about 10 years later, 20 years later, what are the things the Chinese society want? We say “happiness” and “health” – the two “H” strategy.”

“We believe Hollywood, the movie industry, can bring people happiness. Because today nobody is happy. Rich people are not happy, and poor people are not happy. At least when I watch movie, I feel happy. So I think we should be partner with Hollywood.”

“My favorite movie is Forrest Gump. When people call me crazy and stupid in the past 17 years, I told myself Forrest Gump said ‘Go ahead, never care about other people’.And Gump also said: ‘Nobody makes money by catching whales, people make money by catching shrimps.’ So we serve small business.”

 

6. China-US Trade War

“I think China and the US should never have a trade war and we will never have a trade war. And I think we should give president-elect Trump some time. I believe one thing, when trade stops, the world stops.”

“The world is so wonderful, why should I always be the CEO of Alibaba? I come to this world not to work, I come to this world to enjoy my life. I don’t want to die in my office, I want to die at the beach.”