“Alibaba is not just a company trying to monopolize the market with cheap Chinese products. We are a global business, and we believe it’s important to change consumers’ perception worldwide.”
According to the Chinese IT media outlet ZAKER on the 4th, Daniel Zhang, the chairman of China’s largest e-commerce company, Alibaba, made this statement in an interview with Nicolai Tangen, the Chief Investment Officer (CIO) of the Norway Government Pension Fund (NBIM), which was released the day before.
Zhang emphasized that Alibaba is promoting global trade. He stated that the American products sold to Chinese consumers through Alibaba amount to $60 billion annually. The sales of German and French products also reach nearly 14 billion euros ($16 billion) and 7 billion euros ($8 billion) per year, respectively. He explained that not only are Chinese products expanding globally, but products from the West are also entering China, creating a ‘bilateral trade’ through Alibaba.
This statement is interpreted as an attempt to counter the situation where Alibaba is grouped with Chinese companies like TEMU and SHEIN, which are expanding in the global market with ‘ultra-low prices’, and labeled as ‘Chinese companies selling low-cost, low-quality products’.
Zhang also asserted that China will not lose its status as the world’s factory. Despite global companies relocating their factories to Vietnam, Mexico, etc., he emphasized that no other country can replace China in terms of economic scale and labor force.
He stated, “China currently has 800 million production workers, and even if this number drops to 600 million (due to population decline), it’s still an enormous production capacity. All these workers are skilled laborers.”
Zhang believes that China is falling behind the U.S. in the field of artificial intelligence (AI) due to the U.S.’s restrictions on exporting advanced semiconductors to China. He said, “We are probably about two years behind the top models (Large Language Models·LLM). Last October, the U.S. imposed strict regulations on exports to China from advanced semiconductor industries like NVIDIA.” He added, “The U.S. has abandoned the entity list approach and has put the entire China under sanctions. I think we are affected by it.”
Despite acknowledging the impact of U.S. sanctions, he was optimistic that China would succeed in developing an advanced Graphics Processing Unit (GPU), which is essential for AI development.
Zhang pointed out that the Chinese economy is highly dependent on exports. To compete with Western developed countries, it should rely on domestic consumption, but he expressed concern that the current real estate downturn and job scarcity are inhibiting consumers’ purchasing power. However, Zhang noted, “But that doesn’t mean they can’t consume. China has a very high savings rate, and households still have plenty of cash.”
Daniel Zhang, a Yale Law School graduate who practiced law in the U.S., joined Alibaba as CFO when founder Jack Ma conceived the idea for Alibaba in 1999. He led the company’s listings on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange in 2007 and the New York Stock Exchange in 2014. In September last year, he was promoted from Vice-Chairman to Chairman of Alibaba.
Most Commented