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I was listening to Nicolai Tangen's interview with Alibaba co-founder Joe Tsai: https://www.nbim.no/en/publications/podcast/alibaba-co-founder-and-chair-china-

I was listening to Nicolai Tangen's interview with Alibaba co-founder Joe Tsai: https://www.nbim.no/en/publications/podcast/alibaba-co-founder-and-chair-china-jack-ma-ai-and-baseball/ https://www.nbim.no/en/publications/podcast/alibaba-co-found... Alibaba co-founder and Chair: China, Jack Ma, AI and basketball And while smart and sympathetic, I cannot help to think that Alibaba is a company of the past belonging to a time of a certain US-China order that is no more. The future of Chinese tech belongs to companies that are much more fast moving, fearless, and aggressively deep tech than what Alibaba aspires to be.

resolutebat 3y ago
Alibaba was fast moving, fearless and aggressively deep tech, you don't survive the world of Chinese e-commerce if you aren't. They were decapitated and neutered by the Chinese state when they started to show signs of upending the existing order, specifically building a competing financial system (Alipay/Ant) and daring to call out Chinese economic orthodoxy.
- throwaway4good 3y ago
  By deep tech I thinking things more like making your own chips rather than running a ponzi scheme :-D Anyway. If you listen to the Tsai interview he seems more concerned about US regulators than Chinese.
- fancl20 3y ago
  From what I heard from engineers working for Alibaba, my understanding is that they are fighting with their own bureaucracy structure for quite long time to make any effective decision, at same time facing fierce compitition from JD and PDD. At some stage they released new prodect to compete with PDD every few months while still keep losing in their core e-commerce bussiness till now. All these were before government cracking down their financial business. Most of the people I know in the industry think Alibaba is one of the least efficient big tech company in China compare to e.g Tencent, Baidu, Bytedance, Huawei. They all have somewhat similar bureaucracy burden as big corp but not at the level of Alibaba. Their problem is much complex than pointing the finger at Chinese government to explain everything.
  - ametrau 3y ago
    Is that why the search has gone to absolute crap? I’ve switched to Amazon basically for everything I used to get from AE because of the anti search / advertising search. I’d rather pay more and not waste the time.
    - fancl20 3y ago
      I heard they switched to fully use a recommending system for search (don't know how it works today but feels like that's still the case), which means there is there is no real search happening and you query is used as a hint, not a search query (which relativeness matters more). At that time PDD is promoting the idea you buy what they think you will buy. PDD's search is barely functioning at that time and their bussiness model is solely relying on recommending system. Though I'm not sure how much Alibaba's decision is affected by PDD because the story I heard is more driven by their internal politics. I feel like that's really a weird product decision for Alibaba and to me doesn't make a lot of sense.
      - dsab 3y ago
        What is PDD?
        yorwba 3y ago
        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinduoduo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinduoduo
        gorbypark 3y ago
        PDD (PinDuoDuo) is the owner of Temu, which is kinda but not exactly a western version of PDD.
      - datadrivenangel 3y ago
        That explains so much! Alibaba search randomly adds items I've previously bought to totally unrelated searches, so it does feel like a bad recommender system.
seanmcdirmid 3y ago
> The future of Chinese tech belongs to companies that are much more fast moving, fearless, and aggressively deep tech than what Alibaba aspires to be. Being all of that is exactly why Jack Ma got beat down by the party. The party doesn't want fast moving, fearless, aggressively deep tech, they want control, compliance, and stability.
- jimmydef 3y ago
  I think the main reason alibaba got beat down was because it was moving from "tech" into finance offering unregulated loans and jack ma criticizing regulators did not help at all. And alibaba was not "deep tech", more like derivative tech. It's just a ecommerce site. It takes a lot of technical expertise to operate that at a large scale for sure, but at the end of the day, it's not the kind of fundamental tech free from sanctions that the chinese government wanted to pivot its tech industry to.
  - seanmcdirmid 3y ago
    Alibaba is like Amazon, they are known for commerce but have branched out into so many other things, they even have or had a quantum computing effort. Most Chinese companies work under the ask for forgiveness rather than permission creed, because I think that’s how the only way they can do anything at all as the government itself moves slowly, if your project is successful it will be blessed after the fact as always the true way (eg wepay and Alipay started like that). Ma’s mistake was in at least not pretending it wasn’t like that.
amou234 3y ago
> The future of Chinese tech belongs to companies that are much more fast moving Not at all. The future of Chinese tech is state owned enterprises [1]. Just like other Chinese industries, such as state owned real estates [2] or state run communal restaurants [3]. Just like Soviet Union, before it fell. "The Peterson Institute for International Economics analyzed the market capitalization of China's top 100 companies. It found that the share of total market capitalization held by state-controlled enterprises, in which the government holds a stake of 50% or more, rose to 50% by the end of 2023, the highest proportion in five years" [1] China's favored state-owned companies squeeze private sector https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Markets/China-s-favored-state-owned-companies-squeeze-private-sector https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Markets/China-s-favored-sta... [2] https://www.reuters.com/world/china/chinas-state-owned-developers-dominate-sales-land-markets-2023-surveys-2024-01-02/ https://www.reuters.com/world/china/chinas-state-owned-devel... [3] https://www.thinkchina.sg/not-everything-has-be-run-state-thoughts-communal-canteens-china https://www.thinkchina.sg/not-everything-has-be-run-state-th...
- nebula8804 3y ago
  I don't know man, from the outside looking in it seems like despite this arrangement, the people doing the day to day work are fiercely competitive and they want it all. This is just an anecdote but I have seen talks where the Chinese look at the silicon valley grind culture of long working hours and sacrifice and think how can these people be so lazy? Maybe state ownership will collapse it all, maybe the coming demographic implosion will do it. But it does not seem like your daddy's communism....more like a capitalism-communism fusion that combined with nationalistic pride and a desperation to account for all the over production might lead to surpassing what the soviet union could only dream of.
  - amou234 3y ago
    No state owned enterprises in the history of the world has the quality you've just described - fiercely competitive, nationalistic pride, desperation. China is now Soviet Union, but with horrendous demographics, mind-numbing debt, and wealth flooding out of the country. China is old and broke. China is fucked.
fspeech 3y ago
What is the irr for Softbank's investment in Alibaba? If given another chance would they do it again? I believe the answer is yes, so there is no lack of risk capital. Is China willing to pay for talent? Absolutely. Given these two factors I think China can climb the technology ladder. Just a question of time. However this doesn't mean China's GDP will get back to fast growth. Its economy is constrained by demand, not supply. Anyone who has experience with Chinese elders would know how thrifty they are no matter how much wealth they have.

resolutebat 3y ago

Alibaba was fast moving, fearless and aggressively deep tech, you don't survive the world of Chinese e-commerce if you aren't. They were decapitated and neutered by the Chinese state when they started to show signs of upending the existing order, specifically building a competing financial system (Alipay/Ant) and daring to call out Chinese economic orthodoxy.

throwaway4good 3y ago
By deep tech I thinking things more like making your own chips rather than running a ponzi scheme :-D Anyway. If you listen to the Tsai interview he seems more concerned about US regulators than Chinese.
fancl20 3y ago
From what I heard from engineers working for Alibaba, my understanding is that they are fighting with their own bureaucracy structure for quite long time to make any effective decision, at same time facing fierce compitition from JD and PDD. At some stage they released new prodect to compete with PDD every few months while still keep losing in their core e-commerce bussiness till now. All these were before government cracking down their financial business. Most of the people I know in the industry think Alibaba is one of the least efficient big tech company in China compare to e.g Tencent, Baidu, Bytedance, Huawei. They all have somewhat similar bureaucracy burden as big corp but not at the level of Alibaba. Their problem is much complex than pointing the finger at Chinese government to explain everything.
- ametrau 3y ago
  Is that why the search has gone to absolute crap? I’ve switched to Amazon basically for everything I used to get from AE because of the anti search / advertising search. I’d rather pay more and not waste the time.
  - fancl20 3y ago
    I heard they switched to fully use a recommending system for search (don't know how it works today but feels like that's still the case), which means there is there is no real search happening and you query is used as a hint, not a search query (which relativeness matters more). At that time PDD is promoting the idea you buy what they think you will buy. PDD's search is barely functioning at that time and their bussiness model is solely relying on recommending system. Though I'm not sure how much Alibaba's decision is affected by PDD because the story I heard is more driven by their internal politics. I feel like that's really a weird product decision for Alibaba and to me doesn't make a lot of sense.
    - dsab 3y ago
      What is PDD?
      - yorwba 3y ago
        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinduoduo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinduoduo
      - gorbypark 3y ago
        PDD (PinDuoDuo) is the owner of Temu, which is kinda but not exactly a western version of PDD.
    - datadrivenangel 3y ago
      That explains so much! Alibaba search randomly adds items I've previously bought to totally unrelated searches, so it does feel like a bad recommender system.

seanmcdirmid 3y ago

> The future of Chinese tech belongs to companies that are much more fast moving, fearless, and aggressively deep tech than what Alibaba aspires to be. Being all of that is exactly why Jack Ma got beat down by the party. The party doesn't want fast moving, fearless, aggressively deep tech, they want control, compliance, and stability.

jimmydef 3y ago
I think the main reason alibaba got beat down was because it was moving from "tech" into finance offering unregulated loans and jack ma criticizing regulators did not help at all. And alibaba was not "deep tech", more like derivative tech. It's just a ecommerce site. It takes a lot of technical expertise to operate that at a large scale for sure, but at the end of the day, it's not the kind of fundamental tech free from sanctions that the chinese government wanted to pivot its tech industry to.
- seanmcdirmid 3y ago
  Alibaba is like Amazon, they are known for commerce but have branched out into so many other things, they even have or had a quantum computing effort. Most Chinese companies work under the ask for forgiveness rather than permission creed, because I think that’s how the only way they can do anything at all as the government itself moves slowly, if your project is successful it will be blessed after the fact as always the true way (eg wepay and Alipay started like that). Ma’s mistake was in at least not pretending it wasn’t like that.

amou234 3y ago

> The future of Chinese tech belongs to companies that are much more fast moving Not at all. The future of Chinese tech is state owned enterprises [1]. Just like other Chinese industries, such as state owned real estates [2] or state run communal restaurants [3]. Just like Soviet Union, before it fell. "The Peterson Institute for International Economics analyzed the market capitalization of China's top 100 companies. It found that the share of total market capitalization held by state-controlled enterprises, in which the government holds a stake of 50% or more, rose to 50% by the end of 2023, the highest proportion in five years" [1] China's favored state-owned companies squeeze private sector https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Markets/China-s-favored-state-owned-companies-squeeze-private-sector https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Markets/China-s-favored-sta... [2] https://www.reuters.com/world/china/chinas-state-owned-developers-dominate-sales-land-markets-2023-surveys-2024-01-02/ https://www.reuters.com/world/china/chinas-state-owned-devel... [3] https://www.thinkchina.sg/not-everything-has-be-run-state-thoughts-communal-canteens-china https://www.thinkchina.sg/not-everything-has-be-run-state-th...

nebula8804 3y ago
I don't know man, from the outside looking in it seems like despite this arrangement, the people doing the day to day work are fiercely competitive and they want it all. This is just an anecdote but I have seen talks where the Chinese look at the silicon valley grind culture of long working hours and sacrifice and think how can these people be so lazy? Maybe state ownership will collapse it all, maybe the coming demographic implosion will do it. But it does not seem like your daddy's communism....more like a capitalism-communism fusion that combined with nationalistic pride and a desperation to account for all the over production might lead to surpassing what the soviet union could only dream of.
- amou234 3y ago
  No state owned enterprises in the history of the world has the quality you've just described - fiercely competitive, nationalistic pride, desperation. China is now Soviet Union, but with horrendous demographics, mind-numbing debt, and wealth flooding out of the country. China is old and broke. China is fucked.

fspeech 3y ago

What is the irr for Softbank's investment in Alibaba? If given another chance would they do it again? I believe the answer is yes, so there is no lack of risk capital. Is China willing to pay for talent? Absolutely. Given these two factors I think China can climb the technology ladder. Just a question of time. However this doesn't mean China's GDP will get back to fast growth. Its economy is constrained by demand, not supply. Anyone who has experience with Chinese elders would know how thrifty they are no matter how much wealth they have.