Unlike Trump, Xi understood that a new class of business titans could hijack his country’s political system.
Jack Ma is seen up close, holding his fingers to his right eye.Then-Alibaba Group chairman Jack Ma delivers a speech during the fourth edition of the Viva Technology event in Paris on May 16, 2019. CHESNOT/GETTY IMAGES
Five years ago, Jack Ma was not just one of the world’s richest billionaires, but also—perhaps only after President Xi Jinping—the most famous Chinese person in the world.
In the early aughts, Ma built a business empire around his company, Alibaba, which quickly took off as an online shopping juggernaut that first challenged and then outsold Amazon in China, all while branching out into countless other services. For millions of young Chinese people, Ma was their country’s answer to Bill Gates: Ma, a former English teacher, was a self-made man whose example seemed to illustrate the sky-high achievement and wealth that one could attain through a combination of entrepreneurial vision and relentless drive.
Written by Howard Frenchhttps://foreignpolicy.com/2025/01/24/what-china-got-right-about-big-tech/
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