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Overdrive
Ramping up its export juggernaut and taking full advantage of WTO entry, China’s economy in the first decade of the new millennium was “boom with no bust.” The information revolution fed more growth, as hundreds of millions of Chinese came online. But the Internet also became a forum for discontent, and the new leadership team of Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao acknowledged growing environmental and social justice concerns with their call for a more harmonious society. Then, as the credit crisis in the US spread into a global economic crisis, China’s export-dependent growth appeared in jeopardy, and fears of a Chinese crash surfaced. But, as in 1998, China weathered the storm, and emerged in 2010 as the world’s largest exporter, largest foreign creditor, and fastest growing major economy, poised to soon surpass Japan and eventually eclipse the United States as the biggest economy on the planet. |
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A Blind Man Riding on The Back of Blind TigersPeriod: Overdrive (2000s) | Information Revolution
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Click to expand 15 years ago, I came to Seattle. It was my first trip to the States, first time in my life I touched a keyboard and computers, first time in my life I connected to the internet, the first time I decided to leave as a teacher and start a company, called Chinapages.com. And that was the first internet company in China, and at that time I called myself a blind man riding on the back of blind tigers. Without knowing anything about technology or computers, I started the first company. And after 4 years of terrible experience, we failed and 10 years ago, I came back again with my CFO Joseph Tsai, who's here today. We came to the Silicon Valley, with the dreams that we have a dream for Alibaba, we wanted to help SMEs in China and the world to do business online. We believe the internet is a really great place for business and we call it Alibaba because we want "open sesame" for SMEs, small and medium sized companies. We came here looking for venture capitalists. After 2 weeks, we were rejected by all the venture capitalists because they think, "Well, it won't work, because how can you do e-commerce in China? How can you do internet in China? What are you talking about b2b and b2c? Too early for China." We were not disappointed. We were inspired by the Silicon Valley spirit, the American dreams. I remember that every evening when I walked on the street, I saw the traffic in Silicon Valley, the road to San Francisco, lined with traffic. And every evening when I go to Silicon Valley it's lined with lights, people working day and night. And every Saturday when I went, I couldn't even find a parking spot, because people were working hard on the weekends.
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