The life of Jack Ma has been one of highs and lows. In the past he has been rejected by Harvard, ten times, and once, while teaching English, he earned as little as twelve dollars a month. Today, however, he is the founder and chairman of the e-commerce giant Alibaba, the single largest retailer in the world.

The company’s 2014 IPO is, to this day, the biggest ever recorded. In this session he talks to New York Times Editor-at-Large, Andrew Sorkin, about what he sees as the future of globalization and online trade.

Meeting Trump

The conversation begins with a discussion of Ma’s recent meeting with the President-Elect of the United States, Donald Trump. Ma says it was very productive, better than he had expected. Having heard a lot on the news he had been uncertain, but those fears seemed unfounded when he met Trump. “He’s very open minded,” he says, “he listened when I talked.”

Ma reports that their discussions had been very positive, and they had agreed about a great deal: small business; agricultural products; and Chinese-American trade. The President-Elect was apparently very supportive of Ma’s plan to use Alibaba to bring a million jobs to the U.S. “Not employing them myself,” he is quick to point out. “I have forty-five thousand employees, what would I do with one million?” Instead he talks of using the power of Alibaba’s trading platform to facilitate the sale of products from a large number of small businesses.

Globalization

Ma goes on to discuss the widespread dissatisfaction with globalization behind the recent populist surge around the world, and especially in the United States. There is a backlash against globalization, but it is not a problem with globalization itself, he says, but the approach to it. He explains how, in the early days of globalization, the U.S. was behind the generation of new intellectual property, outsourced manufacturing to Mexico and China, services to India, and everyone profited. The complaints regarding jobs moving to China or Mexico now are simply the result of the American globalized business model.

“American companies made millions and millions of dollars from globalization,” Ma says. He explains how, years ago when he first graduated, he bought a beeper. It cost two-hundred-and-fifty dollars, yet the chip inside it cost only eight dollars. This lead to enormous profits, yet Ma asks, “Where did the money go?” The U.S., he says, has spent $13 trillion dollars on war in the last thirty years.

“Globalization is good, but it needs to be improved,” he asserts, going on to say that it should not simply be the domain of big business.

Ma praised China’s economy, saying “the reason China has grown in the last 30 years is because we are open to the world.” When Sorkin challenges this claim, pointing to the problems foreign companies have in exploiting the vast Chinese market without a willing Chinese partner, Ma admitted that there were still improvements to be made. He agreed that China should be more open.

Alibaba vs Amazon

Asked whether he believed the Amazon business model - of owning logistical infrastructure - or the Alibaba model - of not owning the logistical infrastructure - was the correct one, Ma was dismissive.

He spoke extremely positively of his dreams for the Alibaba platform and the capability it offers for every company “to become Amazon.”

He admitted that there is a problem with piracy issues. “The quality of fakes is getting better,” he says, “it’s scary. Sometimes you need a third party to tell if it’s fake. Sometimes the quality is better.”

Ambitions in Hollywood

Asked about rumours of his company’s ambitions in Hollywood following the appearance of the group’s logo on several recent Hollywood blockbusters, Ma was overflowing with positivity.

“What does the world want?” he asked. "Happiness and health. We believe the movie industry makes people happy. So I believe we should partner with Hollywood.”

Ma described a problem he perceives with Chinese culture. “In China we have a lot of heroes, but in China all the heroes are dead. In America they’re all alive. Who wants to be the hero if they all die?” he laughs. “I want my hero to live.”

Revealing his favourite movie to be Tom Hanks’ Forrest Gump, Ma said it taught him that life is tough, but that you had to go ahead regardless. Not only that, he paraphrased Forrest saying that, “no one made money out of catching whales, people make money out of catching shrimp.”