WHILE Australia congratulates itself on riding the China boom by digging resources out of the ground, the Asian giant has spawned a new generation of nimble-thinking, fast-paced entrepreneurs who are making history as they go.
One of the poster boys for the new China is Jack Ma, the founder of the world's largest business-to-business internet commerce company Alibaba, who is visiting Sydney this week as part of China's delegation to APEC.
Alibaba.com is the cyber version of the Canton Trade Fair - a giant internet import-export marketplace for businesses looking to source materials in China and around the world.
Selling anything from wedding gowns and toys to steel coils, ball bearings and Chinese garlic, Alibaba has 3.6 million users in 200 countries. The site covers 30 industries and more than 5000 different product categories.
Its corporate motto is "global trade starts here".
Ma has also extended his business into a Chinese version of eBay, called Taobao.com, which dominates consumer internet trading in China and has about 50 million customers throughout Asia, and has set up his own internet payment system, Ali.pal, which has 48 million customers. He has just launched another business selling cheap software for small businesses.
Along the way he also bought Yahoo's China business in a $1.2 billion deal in 2005 that saw Yahoo take a 40 per cent stake in his company, with Japan's Softbank taking another 28 per cent.
To understand Ma you have to understand where he comes from.
He lives in Hangzhou, the scenic capital of Zhejiang province, a region of 46 million people on the coast of China, just south of Shanghai, which has become one of the hothouses of the new Chinese entrepreneurs.
The birthplace of Chiang Kai-Shek, Zhejiang province has few natural resources but does have access to coastal shipping. It was traditionally regarded with some suspicion by the Communist leaders in Beijing, who didn't favour it with any great investment by state-owned industries.
Never dependent on the state, its hard-working citizens have thrived as China opened up to the world, providing opportunities for a rapidly growing manufacturing and textile base.
Hangzhou itself is consistently listed by Forbes magazine as one of the top places to do business in China. The Commonwealth Bank has had a 19.9 per cent stake in the Hangzhou City Commercial Bank since April 2005.
The young Jack Ma wanted to be a teacher and was keen to learn English. He would hang around the hotels of Hangzhou and offer free tours of the city to foreign visitors.
One of these was a young Australian from Newcastle, north of Sydney. They became friends and Ma, whose plan was still to become a teacher, eventually visited Australia in 1985.
The visit, he says, opened his eyes to the fact that China was not the centre of the world and that there were opportunities to learn from the West.
With his sophisticated English skills, he was sent to the US in the early 90s by a Chinese company wanting to collect money owed by an American company.
That visit opened his eyes to the internet. He came back to China and tried to tell his mates back home in Hangzhou it was time to get aboard this amazing new invention.
They thought he was mad but he went ahead and founded what he thinks is China's first commercial internet business, the China Pages, which contained websites of small businesses in the region.
"I decided to try it although I knew nothing about the technology and had no people," he said in an interview with The Australian this week. "I called myself like a blind man riding the back of a blind tiger," says Ma, an unassuming man with an impish face.
He sold that business and worked in Beijing for a while, heading an internet company for the Government, before deciding to go out on his own again in 1999 with Alibaba. This was the first internet site that allowed businesses from around the world to look for sourcing partners in China.
As the business thrived, he did not hesitate to expand into other areas, taking on eBay with his own company, Taobao.
When he found that payment for online trading was an issue in a country where there are only about 30 million credit card users, he founded his version of Pay.pal, called Ali.pal.
Then there was the Yahoo deal.
Like other new Chinese entrepreneurs, Ma did not let anything constrain him: not history, his lack of formal training in the internet business, or the fact that the net was a foreign invention that he knew nothing about.
Ma is typical of many very successful self-made Asian entrepreneurs who approach life from a very different point of view than the more hidebound Western businesspeople.
They don't bother about defining themselves or acquiring the right skills to approach a task. They don't seek the advice of high-priced consultants or "experts" or take years formulating plans. They don't worry about pay and bonuses and complex share option deals.
They just go and do it. And keep on going, riding the blind tiger, like Ma, on the cutting edge of the China boom.
While Western businesses love to limit their operations - seeking to concentrate on narrowly defined markets - self-made Asian business people often operate conglomerates, cheerfully moving into a whole range of businesses, from trading and manufacturing to property and restaurants and travel.
In China today, particularly, there's a fast-moving open-mindedness and a freedom from tradition that leaps beyond the thinking of "New World" countries such as Australia and America.
Ma wants Alibaba, which is set to list its B2B business on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, to become the world's largest internet company and a member of the Fortune 500.
Ma's assistant during his Australian trip is Brian Junling Li, Alibaba's vice-president of corporate strategy. He was working in Beijing for Motorola a few years ago before he was swept up in the Ma story and joined the Alibaba group.
Brian is proud of the fact that he was born in Hunan Province, the birthplace of Chairman Mao. He also has a PhD in manufacturing from Stanford University in California.
These are the business leaders of the New New World.
Catch them if you can.
One of the poster boys for the new China is Jack Ma, the founder of the world's largest business-to-business internet commerce company Alibaba, who is visiting Sydney this week as part of China's delegation to APEC.
Alibaba.com is the cyber version of the Canton Trade Fair - a giant internet import-export marketplace for businesses looking to source materials in China and around the world.
Selling anything from wedding gowns and toys to steel coils, ball bearings and Chinese garlic, Alibaba has 3.6 million users in 200 countries. The site covers 30 industries and more than 5000 different product categories.
Its corporate motto is "global trade starts here".
Ma has also extended his business into a Chinese version of eBay, called Taobao.com, which dominates consumer internet trading in China and has about 50 million customers throughout Asia, and has set up his own internet payment system, Ali.pal, which has 48 million customers. He has just launched another business selling cheap software for small businesses.
Along the way he also bought Yahoo's China business in a $1.2 billion deal in 2005 that saw Yahoo take a 40 per cent stake in his company, with Japan's Softbank taking another 28 per cent.
To understand Ma you have to understand where he comes from.
He lives in Hangzhou, the scenic capital of Zhejiang province, a region of 46 million people on the coast of China, just south of Shanghai, which has become one of the hothouses of the new Chinese entrepreneurs.
The birthplace of Chiang Kai-Shek, Zhejiang province has few natural resources but does have access to coastal shipping. It was traditionally regarded with some suspicion by the Communist leaders in Beijing, who didn't favour it with any great investment by state-owned industries.
Never dependent on the state, its hard-working citizens have thrived as China opened up to the world, providing opportunities for a rapidly growing manufacturing and textile base.
Hangzhou itself is consistently listed by Forbes magazine as one of the top places to do business in China. The Commonwealth Bank has had a 19.9 per cent stake in the Hangzhou City Commercial Bank since April 2005.
The young Jack Ma wanted to be a teacher and was keen to learn English. He would hang around the hotels of Hangzhou and offer free tours of the city to foreign visitors.
One of these was a young Australian from Newcastle, north of Sydney. They became friends and Ma, whose plan was still to become a teacher, eventually visited Australia in 1985.
The visit, he says, opened his eyes to the fact that China was not the centre of the world and that there were opportunities to learn from the West.
With his sophisticated English skills, he was sent to the US in the early 90s by a Chinese company wanting to collect money owed by an American company.
That visit opened his eyes to the internet. He came back to China and tried to tell his mates back home in Hangzhou it was time to get aboard this amazing new invention.
They thought he was mad but he went ahead and founded what he thinks is China's first commercial internet business, the China Pages, which contained websites of small businesses in the region.
"I decided to try it although I knew nothing about the technology and had no people," he said in an interview with The Australian this week. "I called myself like a blind man riding the back of a blind tiger," says Ma, an unassuming man with an impish face.
He sold that business and worked in Beijing for a while, heading an internet company for the Government, before deciding to go out on his own again in 1999 with Alibaba. This was the first internet site that allowed businesses from around the world to look for sourcing partners in China.
As the business thrived, he did not hesitate to expand into other areas, taking on eBay with his own company, Taobao.
When he found that payment for online trading was an issue in a country where there are only about 30 million credit card users, he founded his version of Pay.pal, called Ali.pal.
Then there was the Yahoo deal.
Like other new Chinese entrepreneurs, Ma did not let anything constrain him: not history, his lack of formal training in the internet business, or the fact that the net was a foreign invention that he knew nothing about.
Ma is typical of many very successful self-made Asian entrepreneurs who approach life from a very different point of view than the more hidebound Western businesspeople.
They don't bother about defining themselves or acquiring the right skills to approach a task. They don't seek the advice of high-priced consultants or "experts" or take years formulating plans. They don't worry about pay and bonuses and complex share option deals.
They just go and do it. And keep on going, riding the blind tiger, like Ma, on the cutting edge of the China boom.
While Western businesses love to limit their operations - seeking to concentrate on narrowly defined markets - self-made Asian business people often operate conglomerates, cheerfully moving into a whole range of businesses, from trading and manufacturing to property and restaurants and travel.
In China today, particularly, there's a fast-moving open-mindedness and a freedom from tradition that leaps beyond the thinking of "New World" countries such as Australia and America.
Ma wants Alibaba, which is set to list its B2B business on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, to become the world's largest internet company and a member of the Fortune 500.
Ma's assistant during his Australian trip is Brian Junling Li, Alibaba's vice-president of corporate strategy. He was working in Beijing for Motorola a few years ago before he was swept up in the Ma story and joined the Alibaba group.
Brian is proud of the fact that he was born in Hunan Province, the birthplace of Chairman Mao. He also has a PhD in manufacturing from Stanford University in California.
These are the business leaders of the New New World.
Catch them if you can.
No comments:
Post a Comment