Ma tells Trump 'I'll create 1m jobs in US'

Alibaba boss pledges to add US companies to its huge lineup of e-commerce sites

Alibaba's ambitious plan to create 1 million US jobs has highlighted the importance of the Chinese market to the incoming Trump administration while boosting the win-win economic relationship between China and the United States, analysts say.

Alibaba Executive Chairman Jack Ma met US president-elect Donald Trump on Jan 9 and laid out the e-commerce giant's plan to include 1 million small and medium-sized US businesses on its websites to sell to Chinese consumers over the next five years.

The Chinese company expects the initiative to create jobs as each company adds a position, an Alibaba spokesman says.

Ma, who oversees the world's largest online shopping sites, says the two shared "ideas about how we can improve trade".

After the meeting at Trump Tower in New York, Trump told reporters: "Jack and I are going to do some great things."

"We had a great meeting," Trump said. He called Ma "a great, great entrepreneur, one of the best in the world, and he loves this country, and he loves China".

Ma says he thinks Trump is "very smart" and "very open-minded".

Sang Baichuan, director of the Institute of International Business at the University of International Business and Economics in Beijing, says the meeting was a sign that the incoming Trump administration is optimistic that China's burgeoning middle class will continue to consume more foreign products.

China exports consumer goods in exchange for high-tech, energy, agricultural and automobile products from the United States, Sang says, adding that "most of the trade is complementary. It isn't direct competition."

Li Gang, vice-president of the Chinese Academy of International Trade and Economic Cooperation in Beijing, says small and medium-sized businesses in the US are keen to ship their products to China however they can, including e-commerce.

"Giant companies such as Boeing, Honeywell International or Johnson Controls will also push their government to build healthy business ties with China to compete with their European and Japanese rivals," Li adds.

Bilateral trade between two countries totaled 3.08 trillion yuan ($445 billion; 421.9 billion euros; 365.7 billion) between January and November, dropping by 1.7 percent year-on-year, according to the General Administration of Customs.

Over the next five years, the consumption demand of China's domestic market will reach $10 trillion, the Ministry of Commerce forecast. That will present attractive trade and investment opportunities to global companies.

The meeting with Trump is a good demonstration of Ma's earlier call to use the internet to knock down trade barriers and provide small and medium-sized enterprises easier access in global commerce, says Qi Xiaozhai, head of the Shanghai Society of Commercial Economy.

Alibaba already enables approximately 10 million merchants to sell to Chinese consumers, according to company data. It is considered to be responsible for creating more than 30 million jobs in China since 2003, when shopping portal Taobao was founded.

The e-commerce empire envisages 40 percent of its business coming from outside China in the next decade, with a long-term goal of serving 2 billion customers globally and supporting 10 million profitable businesses.

According to the 2016 Business Climate Survey conducted by AmCham China, 92 percent of respondents described bilateral relations between China and the US as positive and extremely important to their business growth in China.

Vice-Minister of Commerce Wang Shouwen says bilateral trade has provided huge sales revenues to manufacturers in both countries, adding that it is unlikely either party would do something to sabotage already stable business ties.

Ai Heping in New York contributed to this report. Contact the writers at zhongnan@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily Africa Weekly 01/13/2017 page25)