Alibaba’s Jack Ma speaks in a viral video from 1999

One of Alibaba co-founder Jack Ma’s old videos from 1999 is going viral on the social media platform Instagram. The video shows him speaking to 17 friends in his apartment, outlining his vision for Alibaba and outlining a strategy for competing with America’s largest internet giants.

In the video he says: “Today we are here to discuss what we will be doing in the next 5-10 years. So Alibaba becomes the future. I have always said that our competition is not domestic services, but foreign ones. Our competitors are not in China, but in the US Silicon Valley. So first we should establish Alibaba as a global site, not just a domestic site. Second, we need to recognize the hard-working spirit of Silicon Valley.”

“If we go to work at 8 a.m. and come back at 5 p.m., it’s not a high-tech company. And Alibaba will never succeed if we have an 8-5 spirit. Then we should go and do something else. Americans are good at hardware and systems, but Chinese brains are just as good at information and software. All our brains are as good as theirs,” he added.

“This is the reason why we have the courage to compete with the Americans. If we are a good team and we know what we want, one of us can beat ten of them. We can defeat government agencies and large, well-known companies,” he said.

The video is gaining popularity on the Internet and several netizens have shared their opinions. One user wrote: “Tbh Alibaba is a huge business site at this point, they kind of made it.”

Another user added: “This could be a legendary movie scene.”

Meanwhile, Jack Ma, China’s top technology entrepreneur, openly criticized Chinese regulators during a speech in October 2020, leading to the cancellation of a major listing of the fintech company he founded, Ant Group. The incident triggered a wave of regulatory crackdowns on China’s technology industry, resulting in Ma largely withdrawing from public life.

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