关于马云，你还有很多事不知道

作为中国最富有的人之一，马云的财富总值将近300亿美元。作为阿里巴巴集团董事局主席，他领导着中国电子商务领域的巨无霸：一家拥有2,640亿美元市值和大约4.5亿用户的公司。去年，作为代表中国企业的全球大使，他飞遍全球拜访各国王子、总统、总理以及众多商界人士，期间一共在飞机机舱内度过800小时。“有人告诉我，就连一个专业飞行员都飞不了那么长时间。”他带着有点自我炫耀的语气说。

当那些与马云会面的富翁和高官在和他挥手道别时，他们对马云本人，以及他18年前在浙江省会杭州和朋友共同创办的，目前仍然少有人知的互联网巨型企业往往又多了某些全新的认识。医学专家、现任世界银行行长的金墉四年前在一场持续三个多小时的晚宴上见到马云时，吃惊地看到这位亿万富翁脚上穿着凉鞋，手里拿着佛教念珠，盘腿坐在椅子上。马云通过专注于为小企业服务而促进全球贸易的热情打动了他。当时，这位世界银行领导人正在反思世行自身很多做法存在的问题。

其他人则被马云的为人所感动。中国网约车服务初创企业滴滴出行总裁柳青早在很多年前就认识了马云，并把他当成自己的导师（阿里巴巴同时也是滴滴的股东）。她最近了从自己家人处了解到，马云以前曾经见过一个女裁缝。这位女裁缝生病后马云多次前去探望。柳青说：“他真的很关心周围的人。”

另外还有新任美国总统。他在就职典礼几周前第一次见到了马云。“特朗普几乎从没看到过关于阿里巴巴的报道，”曾任高盛银行家兼高盛亚洲分公司总裁，现任阿里巴巴集团总裁的迈克尔•伊文思（Michael Evans）说，正是他促成了这场会面。“中国消费者很希望能购买美国小企业的产品，他对此很感兴趣。”马云利用这次谈话的机会做出了大胆承诺：未来5年中，阿里巴巴将在美国创造100万个就业岗位。在当选总统的耳朵里，这句话无疑是一首悦耳的乐曲。“这是一次伟大的会见，”他在川普大厦大堂里的摄像机前宣布。站在他身旁的是同样神采奕奕的特朗普：“马云和我要做一些伟大的事情。”

特朗普总统并不是唯一一个刚刚开始了解阿里巴巴的人。尽管阿里巴巴在中国已经如雷贯耳，并且阿里巴巴2014年在纽交所成功上市融资250亿美元后，西方投资者也已知道了这个名字，但是对于大多数外国人来说，马云的公司仍然是一个谜。原因很简单：在中国这个世界第二大经济体之外很少有阿里巴巴的客户。马云当然知道到这种影响力的差距。这就是促使他一年飞行数百小时，到处推广他的公司和计划的原因。

为了实现他的梦想——依靠先进科技，在阿里巴巴数字化平台上实现世界范围内的商品采购、销售、投资和运输——近年来，马云一直把自己包装成全球商业领袖的角色。他已经成为第一位可以自豪地宣称已经冲出国界，走向世界舞台的中国企业家。在他的环球之旅中，马云帮助降低贸易壁垒，推广他自己的慈善品牌，并支持小学教育等公益事业。他对自己的全球化进行了细致精巧的定义，使之和中国国家主席习近平的目标，以及特朗普的美国优先政策相一致。

和这么多领导人会面，马云的动机是很复杂的。尽管中国已经成为一个巨大的消费市场，并且仍然处在快速增长中，但是马云知道，他必须抢占新的市场，才能让阿里巴巴能够保持当前的发展速度。像其他中国明星企业一样，阿里巴巴在中国国内具有强大实力，国外竞争对手难以进入它的地盘。但是，如果目前这种一家独大竞争格局出现变化，外国市场的重要性就将更为显著。与此同时，在其旗下网站因为大量出售假冒商品而遭到广泛批评的情况下，马云还需要大力改善阿里巴巴的声誉，从而赢得世界各地消费者的信任。

马云拥有独一无二的机遇。几个世纪陷入停滞后，他的国家最近正在努力恢复其作为世界领袖的地位，正如他的阿里巴巴已经跻身于世界一流企业的行列。在直觉指引下，今年52岁的马云似乎意识到，现在正是他超越单纯的名气，成为全球最受尊崇的商界领袖的最好时机。

阿里巴巴 VS 亚马逊

如果硬要比较的话，马云和一位秉性固执的美国电商企业家亚马逊CEO杰夫•贝佐斯很相像。贝佐斯在去年《财富》年度世界最伟大领袖名单中位列首席。两人都以他们的坚忍不拔、管理理念、以及日益扩大的风投企业清单而闻名（和贝佐斯一样，马云现在也拥有一家知名报纸）。目前，两家公司已经开始在其各自的本国市场外发生实质性对抗。出乎人们意料的一个事实是，阿里巴巴的业务发展已经超过了亚马逊，至少其盈利能力已经超过后者。另外，无论在北京还是华盛顿，马云与政府的关系都要比贝佐斯更为紧密。要知道，贝佐斯拥有的《华盛顿邮报》已多次引起特朗普的愤恨。

然而，马云目前与白宫的良好关系在很大程度上是由于他对特朗普总统许下了创造就业岗位的承诺。那个大胆承诺与马云最初的说法存在些微差别。具体而言，马云预测，阿里巴巴将与100万家美国小企业签约，帮助后者入驻他的多个电子商务平台，其中主要包括专做C2C生意、流量巨大的淘宝网；以及专为成熟消费型企业打造的高端电商平台天猫。在中国，共有1,000万家小企业入驻阿里巴巴旗下各家电商平台。据估计，这些小企业总共聘用了3,000万名员工。早在1年前，马云就在《华尔街日报》发表了专栏文章，提出了帮助美国小企业将产品卖到中国，从而为美国创造100万个就业岗位的计划。据阿里巴巴估计，每个加入阿里巴巴下属各电商平台的美国小企业都会增聘一名员工，这就是100万个新就业岗位的来源。

开门见山地提出这一大胆承诺的马云是一位天生的推广者和沟通者。常驻中国的投资顾问，同时也是2016年上市的著作《阿里巴巴：马云和他的102年梦想》一书作者的邓肯•克拉克（Duncan Clark）把马云的这种习惯描述成“戏剧般”的和有效的。“我认为，它至少化解了紧张，”克拉克说这番话的同时，美中关系正在日趋恶化。“马云非常善于和各色人物打交道。”就在他说这番话后几个星期，马云控制的阿里巴巴下属企业蚂蚁金服宣布将以8.8亿美元收购总部设在德克萨斯州的支付平台速汇金（Moneygram）。然而，这笔潜在交易仅仅在几周之后就被美国企业Euronet“截胡”。阿里巴巴恐怕需要得到美国政府的支持才能成功拿下这笔竞购。

很多人认为，马云和特朗普的关系预示着阿里巴巴将打入美国消费市场。目前，阿里巴巴宣称更愿意帮助美国企业将其产品出售给中国消费者，而不是反过来。“人们不停问我：‘你们的美国战略是什么？你们的美国战略是什么？’”阿里巴巴集团总裁伊文思说。他说，应该说我们的美国战略并不是要在美国市场与亚马逊火并。实际上，阿里巴巴的美国战略分为三个层面：与成熟品牌合作在天猫上销售产品；帮助对解决就业问题价值最大的小企业通过淘宝网销售产品；在公司最早推出的业务Alibaba.com外贸平台上为美国整机制造商和中国零部件制造商牵线搭桥。伊文思说，天猫上目前有7,000家美国品牌在运营。阿里巴巴没有透露其他两个电商平台上的美国企业数量，原因可能是因为数量太少了。

阿里巴巴一直津津乐道于这家位于曼哈顿苏荷区、名为Stadium Goods的运动鞋寄售店的发展史。伊文思饶有兴致地回忆起一年多前阿里巴巴邀请这家小公司参加纽约的一场会议的情景。这场会议的目的是培训他们如何通过阿里巴巴平台销售产品。后来，Stadium Goods的员工人数从寥寥几人迅速扩大到60人。这是真的，Stadium Goods的创始人兼CEO约翰•麦克菲特斯（John McPheters）说。在这么多员工中，只有3名会中文的人直接操作阿里巴巴平台。对于这家公司来说，中国代表着巨大的商机。今年，他们共向中国售出价值1亿美元的商品，其中90%是通过网购渠道售出的。他说，通过阿里巴巴平台达成的销量占其网售总量的10%左右，并且全部是通过阿里巴巴集团的高端平台天猫售的，天猫对假货的打击力度比其他平台要大得多。“我们最核心的商业原则就是只卖真货，”他说。“我们建立了严格的审查制度确保销售的产品全部为正品。中国消费者非常看重商家的诚信。”

麦克菲特斯很会说话。他一直在强调，他的公司很看重阿里巴巴的天猫平台。这实际上是在暗示他不愿意通过假货猖獗的淘宝网平台做生意。淘宝网的假货问题非常严重，12月，美国贸易代表再次把淘宝网列入其“恶名市场”名单。建立这个名单的目的是为了敦促美国以外的问题市场自查自纠（淘宝网在名单上位于俄罗斯网站Rutracker.org和非法下载网站Pirate Bay之间）。过去几年来，阿里巴巴一直在努力解决假货问题。他们一直说自己尽了最大能力巡查淘宝网，马云自己也提出了更为极端化的对策。在最近发表于一家中国社交媒体网站上的贴文中，马云呼吁要像对待醉酒驾车者一样处罚制售假货的不法分子。在中国曾经极为猖獗的酒驾问题一直到中国政府对酒驾者采取刑事处罚才告解决。“对待制假售假者，总是雷声大，雨点小。”他在贴文中写道。

《阿里巴巴：马云和他的102年梦想》一书作者克拉克说，马云巧妙地利用了中国全国人大会议期间公众对打击假货行动的大胆呼吁。“他们没法得到品牌和某些投资者的信任，”他说。“这正是漂浮他们头上的一朵乌云。”

走向世界舞台

拥有科学家般的好奇心是马云取得商业成功的重要因素。他儿时在故乡杭州通过看英文电影，以及与西方游客对话学习英语，成年后的第一个职业是英语教师。它是最早发现互联网的中国企业家之一，他拥有变色龙般的能力，可以在正确的时间和地点展现自己。例如，1997年，当他在创业的间隙为中国商务部短暂工作期间，得到了一个为来北京访问的雅虎公司联合创始人杨致远担任翻译的机会。“他很爱问问题，很自信，对数字化和互联网的世界十分好奇，”杨致远说。他的雅虎公司于2005年向阿里巴巴投资10亿美元，杨致远也由此成为阿里巴巴的董事之一（雅虎手里的阿里巴巴股权现在价值400亿美元）。

马云喜欢当别人的老师。“过去12年，我一直把自己称作‘首席教育官’，”他在杭州总部的办公室接受远程采访时表示。2013年，他辞去阿里巴巴集团CEO职位（现任CEO张勇于2007年加入阿里巴巴集团）。马云自称，阿里巴巴集团是一家复杂庞大的公司，没有人怀疑马云对这家集团及其众多下属企业的所有重大决策的影响力。事实上，他时常把阿里巴巴和自然环境作类比，他自己很关注环境问题，同时也担任大自然保护协会的董事。在马云看来，环境和他的公司是同一枚结构复杂的硬币的两面。马云说，就像大自然的各个组成部分需要在生态系统中彼此协作那样，“阿里巴巴也需要与社会、政府和所有类型的组织合作。”他说，如果可能，他想精简公司。“但是做不到。”

在提升阿里巴巴和他自己声望的过程中，马云也和多个国际组织建立了密切的联系。去年，联合国贸易和发展会议任命马云为年轻企业家和小企业特别顾问，他同时也是瑞士达沃斯世界经济论坛上的常客。很少有中国高管人士能够与西方企业界的关系如此密切。

2015年，就在贝佐斯收购《华盛顿邮报》两年之后，阿里巴巴收购了英文报纸《南华早报》。和贝佐斯一样，马云基本不干涉报纸的经营，只是安排他的长期心腹、阿里巴巴副总裁蔡崇信担任报社总裁，然后偶尔和报社员工开开会。贝佐斯自称收购《华盛顿邮报》是为了支持这家对于民主制度而言必不可少的机构。但是马云却说，他投资收购《南华早报》的目的是让不懂中文的读者获得与中国有关的高质量信息。

马云认为，他自己必须行事高调。“运营规模如此庞大的商业体系”。他指的是每年在阿里巴巴各个平台上完成、总价值高达4,850亿美元的商业活动。“你必须承担义务和别人分享你的想法。我们的创意、政策、决策会影响到5亿人的生活。”阿里巴巴的经营范围比亚马逊要更加广泛。尽管阿里巴巴220亿美元的年收入只有亚马逊的1,360亿美元的零头，但是阿里巴巴的利润却超过后者：截至12月31日，阿里巴巴的年度运营利润为67亿美元，而亚马逊则只有42亿美元。但是深入分析一下就能知道，亚马逊不仅拥有自己的仓储设施，还拥有其大多数货物库存的所有权，这足以解释其巨大的销售额数字。相较之下，阿里巴巴只是一个轻资产式的技术平台，其大部分收入来源是广告费以及其他与销售有关的收费。

尽管马云在世界舞台上呼风唤雨，但是他的商业帝国却存在一个缺陷：如果没有政府的许可，你就必然会四处碰壁。“作为阿里巴巴这只商业巨兽的掌门人，马云知道，最好的自我保护方式就是进入不同领域，并且实现跨国经营，”中国研究专家和记者、纽约中美关系亚洲协会主任夏伟（Orville Schell）说，他早在10多年就已和马云相识。家住伯克利的夏伟说，几年前，马云造访了他在加州大学伯克利分校上学的儿子，说很希望在这里住上一阵。“他买了一栋房子配齐了家具，希望每年有一半时间住在这里远程遥控他的生意，同时充实精神生活，”夏伟说。“但他最终还是没能敌过把生意做大、做到全球的诱惑。”

马云下一步想做什么？

马云对未来的计划让人大跌眼镜：他想退休。他说，早在他只有45岁时，脑子里就已经出现了退休的念头。同时，他也不希望到七老八十时依然列席董事会会议。“应该给年轻人机会，”他说。他拒绝给出具体的退休时间，但很乐意告诉别人现在有哪些事情正在占据他的工作日程。讲课就是其中之一，接下来是休闲放松。“我有自己的时间表，”他说。“死在办公室，不如死在沙滩上。”

然而，没几个人相信这些话。据接近阿里巴巴的多位人士称，阿里巴巴的所有重大决策都要他亲自拍板，他同时也继续参与规划阿里巴巴的未来战略。他并非公司控股人，持有股份比例不到8%，但是人人都知道他是阿里巴巴的实际老板。史蒂夫•乔布斯的股份比例比马云还低，但却一样控制着苹果公司。同时，马云马不停蹄地穿梭于各国同样也是为了服务于阿里巴巴雄心勃勃的全球化战略。一年前，马云投入10亿美元获得东南亚电商企业来赞达（Lazada）的控股权。同时，阿里巴巴和中国领先支付平台支付宝的运营商蚂蚁金服也投资入股印度电商企业Paytm。尽管阿里巴巴还未曾大张旗鼓地打入美国市场，但它已经投入大量资金收购Magic Leap、Lyft和Snap等美国初创企业的股权。阿里巴巴集团总裁伊文思说：“我们必须紧跟可能影响到商业的任何领域的新生事物，这一点对我们很重要。”

与此同时，马云正在努力实现两个目标：消除贸易壁垒和促进小企业发展。在大公司中，阿里巴巴的使命声明最为简洁：“让做生意更容易。”在中国，阿里巴巴收购了一个名叫“菜鸟”的物流网络的47%股权，面对中国效率低下的官办邮递系统，“菜鸟”的业绩一直节节攀升。支付宝已经把经营范围由支付处理扩展到提供贷款，由此遭到了中国规模庞大的国营银行的嫉恨。马云给这些新商业计划起了一个新名字：世界电商平台（eWTP）。这个包罗万象的词汇足以反映出阿里巴巴对其电商系统进行全球性整合的目标。

10年前，人们不会认为中国最大电商企业的领导人会成为世界贸易的最大吹鼓手。马云说：“我认为，全球化是一个伟大的开端，但它只是开始而已。”全球化是“一个婴儿，”他说，“婴儿也有成长的烦恼，”这明显是在暗指特朗普大张旗鼓地宣称将对中国开展贸易遏制。“我们不能因为婴儿啼哭就把他杀死。”

马云相信，通过商业的力量能够实现政客所无法实现的目标。“和政府相比，可能商业界才是真正能推进全球化的力量，”他说。“200位国家元首汇聚一堂想要实现点什么目标是不可能的。但是如果200位商人聚在一起，可能就会马上出来新点子。”

假如真有这种超级商界聚会的话，发起人恐怕也只有一个人：

马云自己。

（财富中文网）

作者：Adam Lashinsky

译者：郑立飞

Jack Ma is one of China’s richest men, with a fortune valued at nearly $30 billion. As executive chairman of Alibaba Group, he leads the dominant force in Chinese e-commerce, a company with a market value of $264 billion and some 450 million customers. A global ambassador for Chinese business, he spent 800 hours aloft last year—­visiting princes, Presidents, and Prime Ministers and lots of mere businesspeople too. “A professional pilot cannot travel that much, or so I’m told,” he boasts.

Even so, the rich and powerful people who meet with Ma tend to come away from the experience with a fresh nugget of information, either about him or about the still poorly understood digital conglomerate he started with a bunch of friends 18 years ago in the provincial coastal city of Hangzhou. Jim Kim, a physician who is the president of the World Bank, met Ma four years ago over a dinner lasting more than three hours and was startled to find the billionaire wearing sandals, holding Buddhist prayer beads, and sitting cross-legged on his chair. Kim was so taken with Ma’s passion for facilitating global trade by focusing on small-business people that he’s rethinking his international development organization’s approach.

Others are moved by Ma’s humanity. Jean Liu, president of Chinese ride-hailing startup DidiChuxing, has known Ma for years and considers him a mentor. (Alibaba is a Didi shareholder.) She recently learned, through family connections rather than from Ma, about how he repeatedly visited a seamstress he had met after learning she was ill. Says Liu: “He genuinely cares about the people around him.”

Then there’s the President of the United States, who met Ma for the first time a few weeks before his Inauguration. “Trump didn’t know that much about Alibaba,” reports company president ­Michael Evans, a former Goldman Sachs banker and Asia hand who helped set up the powwow. “He was fascinated to hear that Chinese consumers are interested in buying from U.S. small businesses. I don’t think that had occurred to him.” Ma used the sit-down to make a bold promise—that Alibaba would help create 1 million jobs in the U.S. over five years. The pronouncement was music to the President-elect’s ears. “It was a great meeting,” he declared before the cameras in the lobby of Trump Tower, a beaming Ma beside him. “Jack and I are going to do some great things.”

President Trump isn’t the only one who could stand to learn more about Alibaba. Despite its heft in China and the blockbuster 2014 public offering that raised $25 billion on the New York Stock Exchange and introduced Alibaba to Western investors, Ma’s company remains a mystery to most non-Chinese. There’s a simple reason for that: Few outside the world’s second-largest economy are Alibaba customers. Ma is aware of this knowledge gap. It’s part of what drives him to keep logging frequent-flier miles to educate people about his company and his plans.

To realize his vision—which relies on technology to buy, sell, finance, and deliver goods on Alibaba’s digital platforms around the world—Ma has been busily recasting himself of late as a global leader. Already he is the first Chinese business executive who can claim to have transcended his homeland for the world stage. In his travels, Ma promotes the lowering of trade barriers, touts his own brand of philanthropy, and supports causes such as primary-school education. His version of globalization is carefully calibrated and expansive enough to be consistent with the goals of his own President, Xi Jinping, as well as with Trump’s America-first positioning.

As with so many effective leaders, Ma’s motives are complex. China is already a huge consumer market and one that’s still growing fast, but Ma knows that eventually he will need to conquer new territories for Alibaba to continue on its current trajectory. Like other Chinese champions, Alibaba has thrived at home while foreign competitors have thus far been stymied from entering his turf. If that changes, foreign markets will be even more crucial. Ma also needs for ­Alibaba—plagued by criticism over the profusion of counterfeit wares for sale on its sites—to develop a reputation as trusted around the world as Jack Ma is cherished by his fellow bold-faced names.

Ma’s opportunity is unique. After centuries of stagnation, his country has recently reassumed its position as a world leader—just as Alibaba, one of its marquee corporate names, has joined the ranks of world-beating companies. With characteristic intuition, Ma, 52, seems to realize that this is his moment to go beyond merely being famous and take his place among the globe’s revered business leaders.

Squaring off against Amazon

If you’re reaching for comparisons, Ma lines up favorably against a certain dogged American e-commerce entrepreneur: Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, No. 1 last year on Fortune’s annual list of the world’s greatest leaders. Both are famous for their tenacity, their management philosophies, and their growing list of significant side ventures. (Like Bezos, Ma now owns a venerable newspaper.) One surprise, as the two companies enter the early phases of squaring off against each other outside their respective home markets, is that Alibaba’s business is actually better than Amazon’s, at least in terms of its profitability. Plus, Ma arguably has more felicitous government relationships than Bezos—both in Beijing and in Washington, D.C., given that the Bezos-owned Washington Post has repeatedly drawn Trump’s ire.

Ma’s current standing with the White House, however, rests heavily on his job-creating pledge to President Trump. And that bold promise is built on a bit of nuance. Specifically, Ma predicted that Alibaba will sign up 1 million U.S. small businesses to its various e-commerce platforms, primarily Taobao, its mass-selling site for individuals, and Tmall, its higher-end site for established consumer companies. In China, Alibaba hosts 10 million merchants, and it has estimated that those businesses account for 30 million jobs. The 1-million-job pledge updated a general goal of helping U.S. small businesses sell in China that Ma had posited a year earlier in a Wall Street Journal op-ed. The company now estimates that each U.S. business that sells on Alibaba’s platforms will typically hire one employee as a result, hence the 1 million new jobs.

Unpacked, the big promise is classic Ma, a born promoter and natural communicator with a finely tuned ear to the needs of government officials. Duncan Clark, a China-based investment adviser and the author of the comprehensive 2016 book Alibaba, the House That Jack Ma Built, labels the move equal parts “theatrics” and effective. “To me, it broke the tension,” says Clark, at a time of deteriorating U.S.-China relations. “Jack is very good at seducing and working the room.” A few weeks later, he notes, Ant Financial, an Alibaba affiliate controlled by Ma, announced plans to acquire the Texas payments firm Moneygram for $880 million, an offer subsequently topped by the U.S. firm Euronet. Alibaba would have needed the U.S. government’s blessing to prevail in the deal.

Many assumed Ma’s bonding with Trump presaged an Alibaba move into selling to U.S. consumers. For now, Alibaba professes to be more interested in helping U.S. businesses sell to Chinese consumers rather than the other way around. “People are always asking ‘What’s your U.S. strategy? What’s your U.S. strategy?’ ” says Evans, Alibaba’s president. What it isn’t, he says, is competing against Amazon in the U.S. Instead, Alibaba’s designs on the U.S. are threefold: work with established brands to sell on Tmall; help small businesses—the ones that would create new jobs—sell in China on Taobao; and match U.S. manufacturers with Chinese component makers on Alibaba.com, the company’s original business. Evans says Tmall hosts 7,000 U.S. brands. Alibaba doesn’t disclose U.S. figures for the other two categories, presumably because they are too small.

John McPheters, CEO of hip sneaker consignment retailer Stadium Goods in New York City, says Alibaba will account for 10% of his company’s online sales this year.

One company Alibaba does brag about is a hip sneaker consignment store in Manhattan’s SoHo neighborhood called Stadium Goods. Evans relishes recounting how Alibaba invited the tiny company to a conference in New York a little over a year ago to learn how to sell on Alibaba, and how Stadium Goods subsequently shot up from a handful of workers to 60 employees. That’s true, says John McPheters, the company’s cofounder and CEO, though only three of those employees, Chinese-language writers, are attributable to the Alibaba business. China is in fact a huge opportunity for his company, which is on track to move $100 million of merchandise this year, nearly 90% of it online. Alibaba will account for about 10% of online sales, he says, and all of it will be on Tmall, the company’s high-end site, which has much tighter controls to fend off fake goods. “Authenticity is a huge pillar of our business,” he says. “We have a crazy checklist” to ensure what the company sells is legitimate. “Chinese consumers are very focused on trust.”

McPheters is being polite. By stressing his company’s focus on Alibaba’s Tmall, he’s highlighting his unwillingness to sell on Taobao, which has been plagued with counterfeits. The problem is so bad that in December the U.S. Trade Representative reinstated Taobao on its “notorious markets” list, a “name and shame” tool intended to pressure non-U.S. marketplaces to clean up their acts. (Taobao.com appeared between the Russian site Rutracker.org and the Pirate Bay, an illegal-download site.) Alibaba has been struggling with this for years. The company typically says it is doing its best to police Taobao. Yet Ma himself has advocated more extreme measures. In a recent blog post on a Chinese social media site, he advocated treating counterfeiting like drunk driving, an endemic problem in China until the government imposed stiff prison sentences on offenders. “There is a lot of bark around stopping counterfeits, but no bite,” he wrote.

The public call to action, which came during the government’s annual National People’s Congress, was a bold but canny move for Ma, says Clark, his biographer. “They can never do enough to win over the trust of the brands and some investors,” he says. “It’s this cloud that is hanging over them.”

Taking The world Stage

An academic-like curiosity has been a hallmark of Ma’s success in business. He began his career as an English teacher, after learning the language by watching movies and chatting up Western tourists in his native Hangzhou. Ma was one of the first of a group of Chinese entrepreneurs to discover the Internet, and he had a Zelig-like ability to show up in the right place at the right time. In 1997, for example, while working for China’s Ministry of Commerce between startup efforts, Ma was assigned to work as a translator for Yahoo cofounder Jerry Yang on a visit to Beijing. “He was inquisitive, confident, and clearly eager to learn about the new world of digital and the Internet,” says Yang, whose company went on to invest $1 billion in Alibaba in 2005 and who is on its board today. (Yahoo’s stake in Alibaba is now worth $40 billion.)

he says during a video interview from his office in Hangzhou. In 2013 he stepped down as CEO of Alibaba. (The current CEO, Daniel Zhang, joined the company in 2007.) Yet no one doubts that Ma’s is the singular voice that matters on all important decisions regarding Alibaba and its many affiliates, a group Ma himself acknowledges is complex. In fact, he likens Alibaba to the environment, in which he has taken a keen interest as a board member of the Nature Conservancy. For Ma, the environment and his company are two sides of the same complicated coin. Just as the different components of nature need to work together in an ecosystem, says Ma, “Alibaba needs to work with society, government, and all kinds of organizations.” He would simplify his business if he could, he says. “But I cannot.”

Ma has gotten involved with numerous international organizations, in the process raising his stature and Alibaba’s. Last year Ma was named a special adviser on youth entrepreneurship and small business to the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, and he’s a fixture at the World Economic Forum in Davos, ­Switzerland—the rare Chinese executive who mixes as easily with Western peers as with those in China.

In 2015, Alibaba bought the English-language South China Morning Post newspaper, about two years after Bezos bought the Washington Post. Like Bezos, he has taken a hands-off approach, meeting infrequently with its staff, having installed his longtime dealmaking confidant, Alibaba vice chairman Joe Tsai, as head of the organization. Whereas Bezos framed his purchase as aiding an institution integral to democracy, Ma explained his investment as ensuring that non-Chinese-speakers have access to high-quality information about China.

The Alibaba chairman sees his high profile as an obligation. “Running such a big economy”—his word for the $485 billion worth of economic activity that took place on Alibaba last year—“you have the responsibility to share with people what you think. Our ideas, our policies, our decisions are going to affect the lives of half a billion people.” The scope of Alibaba’s business activity is instructive, again, in comparison with Amazon’s. While Alibaba’s revenues of nearly $22 billion are tiny compared with Amazon’s $136 billion in sales, Alibaba is far more profitable. Ma’s company had operating profits of $6.7 billion in the 12 months ending Dec. 31, vs. Amazon’s $4.2 billion. Whereas Amazon owns warehouses and takes ownership of much of the inventory it sells, which explains its higher sales figure, Alibaba is an “asset-light” technology platform, making money mostly by charging for advertising and other sales-related fees.

There is a business imperative behind Ma’s global leadership, given that nothing happens in China without the government’s explicit or implicit permission. “I think Jack understands that as powerful as Alibaba is in China, his best protection is to diversify into a multinational,” says Orville Schell, a China scholar and journalist who is director of the Asia Society’s Center on U.S.-China Relations in New York City and who has known Ma for more than a decade. Schell, who lives in Berkeley, says that a few years ago Ma came to visit his son, who was attending UC-­Berkeley, and aspired to stay for a while. “He got a house and furnished it, and hoped to live half time and audit courses, participating in the life of the mind,” says Schell. “But then the siren song of his business and making it bigger, greater, and more global took over.”

What’s next, Jack?

Ma has a startling confession: He wants to retire. He says he first began preparing for that day when he was 45. And he doesn’t want to be one of those old men who attend board meetings long after they’ve lost their mojo. “They should give the young people a chance,” he says. He demurs on revealing exactly when he plans to bow out, though he has ideas about what activities will occupy his time. One is teaching. The other is relaxing. “I have my own timetable,” he says. “I don’t want to die in my office. I want to die on the beach.”

Few take this talk seriously, however. Multiple observers close to Alibaba point out that no major decisions happen without him and that he continues to shape strategy for Alibaba. He owns just under 8% of the company, not a controlling stake, yet everyone understands that people work for Jack—much the way Steve Jobs ruled Apple with an even smaller share of the company. And Ma’s globetrotting serves Alibaba’s global ambitions. A year ago it paid $1 billion for a controlling stake in Lazada, a Southeast Asian online retailer. Alibaba and Ant Financial, which runs the dominant Chinese payments platform Alipay, have invested in Paytm, an Indian e-commerce player. And while Alibaba’s operational forays into the U.S. market have been furtive, it has invested aggressively in U.S. startups, including Magic Leap, Lyft, and Snap. Says Evans, the company’s president: “It is important for us to keep abreast of things that could have an impact on any aspect of our business.”

In the meantime, Ma is pursuing his twin goals of knocking down trade barriers and boosting the fortunes of small businesses. Alibaba has one of the simplest mission statements of any big company: “to make it easy to do business anywhere.” In China, this meant investing in a network of logistics companies called Cainiao—Alibaba owns 47%—that vastly improved on the meager capabilities of the government’s postal delivery system. Alipay is now boldly branching out from payment processing to loans, at times angering China’s massive state-owned banks. Ma has crafted a new label for such initiatives: the World e-Trade Platform, or eWTP. It’s a catchall phrase to explain the global integration of Alibaba’s e-commerce systems.

A decade ago it would have been unfathomable that the leader of China’s biggest e-commerce company would be perhaps the most prominent corporate voice on world trade—though no more unlikely than that the President of China would give a pro-globalization address to the World Economic Forum in Davos, as Xi Jinping did in January. Ma was in the audience when Xi spoke, and he met with Xi there. “He made a wonderful speech and a commitment to globalization,” says Ma. “I think globalization is a great start, but it’s just the beginning.” Globalization is “a baby,” he says, “and the baby is having growing pains,” obliquely referring to Trump’s full-­throated trade challenges to China. “We should not kill the baby because he cries a lot.”

Then Ma pivots from government to capitalism, extolling his belief in the power of business to accomplish what politicians cannot. “Maybe the business community has to drive this instead of government,” he says. “I feel sorry for government. When you put 200 country leaders in the same room trying to realize something, it’s impossible. But when you put 200 businesspeople in one room, we might work something out.” And maybe Ma will be leading that conversation.A version of this article appears in the April 1, 2017 issue of Fortune with the headline "You don't know Jack."