Alibaba: The Inside Story Behind Jack Ma and the Creation of the World's Biggest Online Marketplace
Early Chinese-sourced account, admiring and lightly sourced.
Summary
Liu, a Chinese business writer, with Martha Avery translating and adapting, wrote an early account of Alibaba and Jack Ma for a Western audience, published in 2009 before the company's international listing.
The account covers Ma's background as an English teacher in Hangzhou, his early internet venture China Pages, the founding of Alibaba in 1999 as a business-to-business directory connecting Chinese manufacturers with foreign buyers, the SoftBank investment, the launch of Taobao to compete with eBay in consumer marketplaces, the creation of Alipay, and the Yahoo investment.
The book is written from Chinese sources and reflects a Chinese business press perspective, which is both its distinguishing feature and its main limitation. It is largely admiring, treats Ma's public statements as accurate accounts of his reasoning, and does not examine the governance structures, the regulatory relationships or the variable interest entity arrangements that Western investors most need to understand.
The reference has not verified the specific claims and figures in this account. Duncan Clark's later book, written by someone who knew the company from the beginning and who understands what Western investors need explained, is the better source on the same subject and covers the more consequential later period including the Alipay transfer. This volume's interest is as an early Chinese-perspective treatment rather than as the authoritative history.
Key takeaways 7
- Alibaba began as a business-to-business directory connecting Chinese manufacturers to foreign buyers, which was a different business from the consumer marketplace it became known for.
- Ma's background outside technology and finance shaped a company built on sales and merchant relationships rather than on engineering.
- Taobao was created specifically to compete with eBay in the Chinese consumer market, and it won by removing listing fees that eBay charged.
- SoftBank's early investment provided the capital that allowed Alibaba to sustain losses through the period before revenue.
- Alipay was built because no trusted payment mechanism existed for transactions between strangers in China.
- The account is written from Chinese sources and does not examine the governance structures Western investors most need to understand.
- The reference has not verified the specific claims and figures in this early account.
Who should read it
Readers wanting an early Chinese-perspective account of Alibaba, with Duncan Clark's later book as the better source.
Where it sits in the reference 2
Who recommended it 1 · 1 direct
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