Alibaba Chief Ma urges WTO overhaul
Being non-inclusive
Jack Ma, chairman of the world’s largest online trading platform Alibaba, has called for a need to overhaul the World Trade Organization (WTO) to make it more responsive and inclusive to small businesses as he slammed the existing multilateral trading body for catering more to the big boys leaving behind the small ones.
Ma issued this call during a speech at the APEC CEO Summit 2015, which runs parallel to the 2015 APEC Leaders’ Summit, where he shared some insights on the success of Alibaba and how it has provided a venue for small businesses. Alibaba operates the world’s leading online and mobile marketplaces in retail and wholesale trade, as well as cloud computing and other services. The group provides technology and services to enable consumers, merchants, and other participants to conduct commerce in its ecosystem making it easier for businesses to do business anywhere.
“We should build up new e-WTO or WTO 2.0. Past through the years, what WTO did was for big companies,” said Ma.
Ma has urged that in the next 20 years, the WTO should be used to support the small guys because “if we cannot change it, we would be a disaster for everybody” stressing that the small guys have the most innovative companies than the big boys.
Ma went on to define free trade as not about trading of products, and a tool against other nations, but a faster tool to understand each other and to enable people to cross border.
“Trading is not about trading other products. Trading is about culture, passion, innovation, and creation. No matter what country you are, no matter what size of company you are, trade is a freedom. Trade is a human right. Trade should not be used as a tool against the other nations,” Ma said.
“15 years ago, when we had this idea on using the Internet to help small guys in China, everybody said NO, impossible. Our job is to make the impossible, possible,” he added noting that as a start-up they have to compete against the great minds of the graduates of Harvard, Yale and Berkely.
Now, Alibaba is a global trading platform with sales from China alone expected to hit $500 billion, almost the same size with the world’s biggest retail chain giant Wal-Mart.