Alibaba takes it to a whole new level

Alibaba is a curious phenomenon. The Chinese e-commerce market-maker has recently announced plans to list its shares on the US stock markets, through a massive initial public offering, making it the largest tech IPO ever. Following that, in terms of market capitalization, it would perhaps find its place between Facebook and Walmart, as some analysts predict.

Few people can give a neat summary of the company's sprawling organization and all its interests in various sideline businesses. What they can say is only that there are many of them.

Even fewer people know what kind of person the 49-year-old chairman, Jack Ma, is. But do these things really matter? In many ways, Alibaba is no longer a company but, as the Chinese often say, a "platform" where lots of China's online businesses operate. It's like an open plaza for a sprawling online flea market ("$120 billion flea market", as the Financial Times called it) which accounts for more than half of China's parcel deliveries.