Alibaba woos US small businesses
About 3,000 small US businesses and entrepreneurs attended Alibaba’s Gateway ‘ 17 Event to learn about business opportunities in China. The event was held in Detroit, Michigan on Tuesday and Wednesday.
Experts said that Jack Ma Yun, Alibaba’s founder and executive chairman, is fulfi lling his promise to create 1 million jobs in the US. In January, Ma met with US President Donald Trump and said that he would create 1 million jobs in the US.
“If you miss the opportunity to sell your products to China, you will ... miss the future,” Ma said at the opening event of the group’s Gateway ’ 17.
“The event was held by a Chinese company in the US, which drew both foreign and domestic attention,” Jing Linbo, director of the Chinese Evaluation Center for Humanities and Social Sciences at the China Academy of Social Sciences, told the Global Times on Wednesday.
In light of a 100- day bilateral action plan launched in April, “the event has a positive meaning for bilateral economic cooperation,” said Jing.
The event is an opportunity for US small businesses “to think bigger, to think globally,” said Michigan Lieutenant Governor Brian Calley, during the event.
Calley also said in a meet- ing with Ma on Monday that he hoped to set up a channel on tmall. com for merchants from Michigan.
The event is good for Alibaba’s “brand- building overseas,” Liu Jianying, an associate research fellow at the Chinese Academy of International Trade and Economic Cooperation, told the Global Times on Wednesday.
“Alibaba would like to assume the social responsibility of pushing forward the globalization of small businesses,” said Liu, noting that the fi rm has great ambitions, and not only in the US.
Ma has said that he hopes “Alibaba’s size in 2036 will make it comparably sized to the world’s fi fth- largest economy,” according to a note posted on alizila. com, a news hub of Alibaba, on Tuesday.
Ma said that he will continue to support the Electronic World Trade Platform, a global online business platform he proposed in 2016, according to the note.
China’s middle class is projected to exceed 600 million by 2022, Ma said in an open letter published in April, and he said that will mean a lot of business opportunities in China.
China’s retail sales went up 10.3 percent year- on- year to 14.3 trillion yuan ($ 2.1trillion) in the fi rst fi ve months of 2017, according to data from the National Bureau of Statistics. Online sales increased 32.5 percent year- on- year to 2.5 trillion yuan in the same period.