Alibaba founder and Executive Chairman Jack Ma smiles before his IPO roadshow at a hotel in Hong Kong on Sept. 15.(Photo: Vincent Yu, AP)
BEIJING — China's richest man celebrated his 50th birthday last week in the United States and expects his company will last twice as long, plus two years.
Revealing his ambition — and a love of numbers common in China — Jack Ma says Alibaba will last 102 years so the Internet empire he founded in 1999 can span three centuries.
Under Ma's maverick leadership, the 15-year-old firm has already bridged a period of extraordinary change in global trade and the Chinese economy. In a nation with little e-commerce but plenty of Communist Party bureaucrats, he raised a still-growing giant whose U.S. initial public offering, which will start trading under the BABA ticker Friday, is the largest in history.
REJECTED BY KFC
His rags-to-riches journey is just as spectacular. A scrawny Ma, just over 5 feet tall, was rejected by KFC and other employers in his hometown of Hangzhou in east China. He believed in the Internet's business potential when few other Chinese did. Outlandish ideas earned him the nickname "Crazy Jack Ma." No one thinks he's mad now, even when dressing in wild wigs and lipstick for his annual meeting where he serenades a stadium full of Alibaba employees.
Ma's readiness to make fun of himself, and speak his mind, stands in contrast to China's often conservative corporate barons. Charismatic and energetic, this former teacher has become an inspiration to millions across China. He flunked at math but loved English, and countless books and DVDs sell his business lessons in every airport lounge.
Ma — whose net worth is $21.9 billion,according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index — now stars in the coming-out party for China's private sector onto the world stage. He praises and uses Western management techniques but also quotes regularly from Chairman Mao Zedong. He is a fan of China's kung fu novels and made those legends part of his company's culture. He travels the world with a tai chi trainer.
Jack Ma, whose Chinese name is Ma Yun, was born in 1964 into a markedly different China. Communist Party campaigns dominated daily life. His parents performed a type of musical storytelling that was banned during Mao's devastating Cultural Revolution, from 1966 to 1976.
Ma's grandfather, a local official under the Nationalist Party that Mao defeated, was persecuted as an enemy of the Communist revolution. Ma and his relatives all suffered at that time, wrote Chinese author Zhang Yongsheng in a 2009 biography.
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Like most Chinese parents back then, Ma's father beat him growing up. But there were childhood pleasures, too. He liked collecting and fighting crickets, an ancient pastime that Mao also banned. Ma developed an expert ear, able to distinguish the type and size of cricket just by the sound, his friend and personal assistant at Alibaba, Chen Wei, wrote in his 2013 book on Ma.
(Photo: Peter Parks, AFP/Getty Images)
Starting at age 12, Ma says he awoke at 5 a.m. to walk or bicycle to Hangzhou's main hotel so he could practice his English with foreign tourists, who started trickling into the country after Mao's death in 1976. He did this for nine years and acted as a free tour guide to many, befriended several and later visited one family in Australia.
Those experiences opened his eyes. "I realized what they told me was quite different from what I had learned in school or heard from my parents," Ma told Xiao-Ping Chen, a professor at the University of Washington in Seattle, in an interview published last year.
MA MEETS THE INTERNET
After twice failing the national college entrance exams, Ma entered what he called "Hangzhou's worst college." Graduating in 1988, Ma married his college sweetheart and taught English at a local college for five years, earning $15 a month. During that time, he also applied for, and failed to land, jobs at a local KFC, a hotel and the city police.
Determined to enter business, Ma set up a translation company, but he still had to peddle goods on the street to get by. He traveled to the United States in 1995 as a translator to help a Chinese firm recover a payment. The attempt failed, and the American who owed money pulled a gun on him, Ma says. But a friend in Seattle showed Ma the Internet, and an idea began brewing.
Ma noticed there was not a single online listing for "China" and "beer," unlike those that popped up for American and German beer. He returned to China and set up a listing site that he later sold to the government. After working in Beijing for an Internet firm under the Ministry of Commerce, Ma returned home to Hangzhou to pursue his dream.
ALIBABA FOUNDED
With the help of more than a dozen friends who pooled their resources — just $60,000 — he founded Alibaba, a business-to-business online platform. The company now makes more profit than rivals Amazon.com and e-Bay combined, as China's burgeoning middle class are big spenders online, and small companies rely on Alibaba and its online payment system.
(Photo: Calum MacLeod, USA TODAY)
Ma seized opportunities as China was transforming into a market economy. At the time, the Internet was first being promoted, and small, private businesses struggled to get loans and had to compete against government-protected state firms, said economist Feng Pengcheng, director of the China Research Center for Capital Management at the University of International Business and Economics in Beijing.
"The business model Ma Yun created in China suited the Chinese market. It might be a failure in the U.S. market, but it's so successful in China," Feng said. "What's more, Ma Yun is good at cooperating with other talents. His company culture and his personal charm attracted employees, and his slogans are uplifting," he said.
“ His hobbies are still tai chi and kung fu novels.”Chen Wei, Ma's personal assistant
For a billionaire so outspoken on company and business issues, Ma says little about his family and manages to keep his private life quiet and scandal-free. Ma and his wife Zhang Ying have a son, an undergrad at the University of California-Berkeley, where Ma had audited classes. A black-and-white photo of a young Ma with his older brother and younger sister went viral this month in China's cyberspace, as many people were unaware their richest citizen even had siblings.
"Ma Yun's lifestyle is very simple and modest. His hobbies are still tai chi and kung fu novels," Chen, his friend and assistant, said last week from Boston, while accompanying Ma on Alibaba's U.S. roadshow before the IPO.
"I don't think he has changed much, he is still that old style. After the IPO, I am sure his lifestyle will be simpler. He won't change," Chen said. In his book, being published in English this month, Chen said Ma enjoys meditation in the mountains, playing poker with friends and writing his own kung fu fiction. By Ma's own account, he believes in both Buddhism and Taoism, and follows many tenets of Confucianism.
'OPPOSITE OF STUFFY'
"My father said if you were born 30 years ago, you'd probably be in a prison, because the ideas you have are so dangerous," Ma told Charlie Rose in a 2011 TV interview. Despite such bravado for a Western audience, Ma has always been careful in China to avoid statements and actions that could jeopardize his business.
If China ever did permit open elections, Ma could become a popular candidate for top office, said Duncan Clark, a Brit who is a Beijing-based technology consultant. "He is the opposite of stuffy and canned. He's funny, creative and a compelling speaker. I often thought he has another career in stand-up comedy," he said.
Ma resigned last year as Alibaba's CEO, but he clearly remains in charge as the firm's executive chairman. He has hinted at exploring more "cultural" pursuits, such as film-making, education and environmental protection.
"One issue facing China is that people's wallets are bulging, but their heads are empty," he told Hong Kong's South China Morning Post last year. Ma also promises more philanthropy, including what may be China's largest charity foundation. Expect to hear plenty more from maverick Ma.