The rumour this week spread like wildfire: could it be possible that Jack Ma, one of China's greatest success stories, was planning to leave the mainland for good?
On Tuesday Hong Kong's Economic Journal claimed that Alibaba founder Ma planned to move to Hong Kong next year on an investment immigration scheme. The news went viral on Chinese social media sites. Recent statistics show 47% of Chinese millionaires plan to leave, mainly to escape economic uncertainty and environmental decay, but Ma departing would be an extraordinary blow to China's self-image as an emerging global player – he is its greatest rags-to-riches hero, an inspiration to a generation of budding entrepreneurs.
Earlier this week, Ma quickly put the rumour to rest. Speaking to reporters in Hong Kong, he appeared physically precarious – Ma is razor-thin and standing about five feet tall – yet animated and forceful, with bulging forehead and expressive, restless hands. His speech was both patriotic and diplomatic, colloquial yet clearly well-planned. He explained that he had no plans to emigrate. "Hangzhou is where I was born, went to school and started my business," he said, speaking of his coastal Chinese hometown.
"I didn't know whether to laugh or cry" at the reports, he said later.
Yet he added that he harboured no prejudices towards Chinese citizens who moved abroad. "I like my friends [in Hong Kong], its climate, its food, and especially I like that it is part of China," he added. On Friday the Alibaba Group, which launched as a "business-to-business marketplace for global trade" 15 years ago, opened on the New York stock exchange with the largest IPO in American history. Initially priced at $68 the shares started trading at $92.70 as investors jumped at the chance to profit from China's growing middle class.
The IPO has made Ma, 50, China's richest man – as of last month, he owns $21.9bn in assets, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. Alibaba is China's dominant e-commerce company – between its two main online marketplaces, Taobao (like a Chinese eBay) and TMall (more like Amazon), the company controls 80% of the country's e-commerce and accounts for more than half of its parcel deliveries. Yet in recent months, Ma has pushed the company far beyond its core domain, placing it among the ranks of highly diversified conglomerates such as Google and GE. Alibaba's recent ventures include a travel booking company, a navigation app, a music-streaming service and a football team.
Although Ma said that he struck out on his own last year to pursue a philanthropic agenda – making China's "water clearer, skies bluer, and food more secure" – he is still clearly Alibaba's top decision-maker, with a 9% stake in the company.
Sanjay Varma, a former Alibaba vice-president who now works in Hong Kong, said he remembers having long, late-night conversations with Ma about his ambitions in 1999, soon after the company was founded. "He really wanted to empower the little guys, the small companies, the SMEs," he said. "Jack back then was humble, and today he's still very humble. What's changed is his power – he's obviously extremely rich, but in terms of his goals and his vision, those haven't changed a bit."
Ma was born two years before the start of China's cultural revolution in Hangzhou, a historical eastern city of 8.7 million people known for its scenic lakes. His grandfather, a Nationalist party official before the Communists came to power, was persecuted under Mao Zedong; his parents were performers of Ping Tan, a traditional form of theatre. Ma did poorly in maths as a student, but excelled in English; as a child he would guide foreigners through the city's main attractions to improve his speaking skills. Ma failed his college entrance exam twice, but did well enough on his third attempt to enrol in Hangzhou Normal University, where he studied English. He graduated in 1988, and taught English for years at the Hangzhou Institute of Electronic Engineering, earning $12 per month.
Ma first experienced the internet in 1995 on a short trip to Seattle – he has recalled searching for the word "beer" on Yahoo! – and quickly became obsessed. That year he launched his first internet venture, an online directory called China Pages, but he quit the following year after the government forced him into a joint-venture with a state-owned firm. In 1999 he started Alibaba in his Hangzhou flat, with 17 friends and $60,000 (£36,400) of funds. At the time e-commerce was unheard of in China. "I called myself a blind man riding on the back of blind tigers," he once said.
During an interview with a Washington University business professor last year, Ma used a dizzying array of visual symbols to describe his management philosophy, including fish in a pond and gold bars falling from the sky. "Because of [China's] rapid economic growth in the past 30 years, and the lack of religious beliefs in this country, our management follows a less consistent pattern [than the US]," he said. "We must take scraps from here and there, and nothing is our own." His own style, he said, combines precepts from Taoism, Buddhism, Confucianism, and Tai Chi.
Porter Erisman, a former Alibaba vice-president and director of Crocodile in the Yangtze, a documentary about his experience with the company, told the Guardian in April: "In China, just when the internet was getting started, there weren't many outlets for young people to express themselves. They couldn't do that in politics or even the arts, really. So the internet is where the first homegrown heroes of this new generation came from."
