[2010.12.29]China's king of e-commerce 中国电子商务的王者

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http://www.ecocn.org/thread-44486-1-1.html
Alibaba
阿里巴巴

China's king of e-commerce
中国电子商务的王者

Jack Ma knows as much as anyone about how China’s middle class spends its money. What will he do with this information?

马云比谁都清楚，中国的中产阶级如何消费。那么，他将如何利用这一信息呢？

Dec 29th 2010 | HANGZHOU | from PRINT EDITION



A DOZEN big screens hang on the wall. Maps flash. Numbers stream by. The Alibaba Group’s “live data monitoring room” offers a snapshot of frantic activity: Chinese firms trading with foreign ones; Chinese individuals buying clothes from each other. Perhaps half a billion people use Alibaba’s various online services. The group’s diminutive founder, Jack Ma, smiles that business is “pretty good”. Yet he is far from satisfied.

十二个大屏幕悬挂在墙上，屏幕中地图闪现，数据滚动。如火如荼的网上交易活动在阿里巴巴集团的“实时数据监控室”里可见一斑：中国企业与外国企业进行着交易；中国人买卖着服饰。也许高达五亿的人正在使用阿里巴巴提供的各项在线服务。集团的创始人马云，笑言“生意红火”。但是，这位身材短小的老板还远未满足于此。

In a country where tycoons are often the children of politicians, Mr Ma stands out. He failed twice to get into college. He learned English from the radio. He stumbled on the internet during a trip to America as an interpreter in the mid-1990s. He typed the phrase “Chinese beer” into a search engine. No results appeared. He saw an opportunity.

在这个商业大亨多出自官二代的国家，马云是个例外。他参加高考，曾两度名落孙山。他跟着收音机学习英语。上世纪90年代中期，马云作为一名口译人员，在一次去美国的旅途中偶然接触到网络。他在一个搜索引擎中键入“中国啤酒”，没有出现任何相关的结果。然而，马云就是在这空白的结果中窥见了商机。

He started Alibaba in 1999, to help small firms find customers and suppliers without going through costly middlemen. Alibaba.com now claims to have 57m users, including some in nearly every country. It is sometimes likened to eBay, but is more like an online Yellow Pages.

马云于1999年创办阿里巴巴，旨在帮助小企业绕过昂贵的中间商，直接找到顾客和供应商。现在，阿里巴巴网站宣称已拥有5700万用户，涵盖几乎所有的国家。阿里巴巴有时被拿来与易趣作比较，但其实它更像一本网络黄页。

Another venture, Taobao.com, sells to consumers. It has 300m customers and shifted $29 billion-worth of goods in 2009. It is like a scrappy cross between Amazon and eBay: it operates an online mall where vetted sellers can hawk their wares, and a site where anyone with a Chinese identity number can sell anything legal to anyone. It generates money through advertising.

马云创办的另一个企业——淘宝网，致力于打造网络零售平台。2009年，淘宝网已拥有3亿客户，交易总额高达290亿美元。它就像一个亚马逊和易趣的杂交体：淘宝网经营一个网络商城，在这里，只要是中国公民都可以成为卖家，而经过审核的卖家就可以兜售他们的合法产品。淘宝网自身则通过广告盈利。



Alibaba’s staff boast of the businesses they have nurtured. One Chinese village had a stack of rabbit meat, having skinned the creatures for fur. The chief asked for suggestions. A villager sold the lot on Alibaba.com. More commonly, clients are small firms that want to link cheaply to the global market. Machine-makers in Turkey or Britain use Alibaba to find cheap suppliers in China without having to go there. Buyers can read reviews that others have written about each seller, which fosters trust, though it is far from foolproof.

阿里巴巴的职员对于他们创造的商业模式非常自豪。中国有个村子盛产兔皮，剩下大堆兔肉。村长问大家有何处理办法，结果一村民在阿里巴巴上将兔肉全卖了。阿里巴巴的用户更普遍的是小企业，它们希望能找到一条低成本的通向国际市场的渠道。土耳其和英国的机器制造商无需去中国，也只需通过阿里巴巴寻找廉价的中国供应商。买家还可以看到其他购买者对于各卖家的反馈，这使卖家更为可信，虽然还谈不上绝对可靠。

The Alibaba campus in Hangzhou looks much like the offices of a zippy firm in Silicon Valley. The architecture is airy and feng shui-compliant. Employees enjoy ping-pong and free massages. Grey hairs are as rare as neckties. As is common at Chinese internet firms, a disproportionate number of senior managers are foreign-educated or have worked abroad.

位于杭州的阿里巴巴总部看起来像极了硅谷中新兴企业的办公室。该建筑空间通畅且顺应风水，员工可在里面享受乒乓球和免费的按摩。在这里，很少看到老年人和正儿八经打领带的人。和中国的很多网络公司一样，阿里巴巴的高级经理人员，很大一部分都有海外留学或工作的经历。

Alibaba has hefty foreign backers: America’s Yahoo! and Japan’s Softbank. Yet because of where it is, it cannot operate like a Western firm. Until the mid-1990s the growth of the internet went all but unreported in China’s news media. So getting started was hard for Mr Ma. But now he sees opportunities everywhere.

阿里巴巴拥有实力雄厚的国外后盾：美国雅虎和日本软银。但是因为它身处中国，所以无法像西方公司一样运营。一直到上世纪90年代中期，中国的新闻媒体对英特网在全球的欣欣向荣只字未提。所以，马云的事业伊始，可谓举步维艰。然而，现在他看见遍地都是机遇。

China has millions of small entrepreneurs but a primitive financial system. To boost traffic through his websites, Mr Ma set up an online payments system, Alipay, in 2004. Its growth was greatly helped by the ban that China imposed, until recently, on its American rival, PayPal. Alipay says it now has 470m users worldwide and that more than 500,000 Chinese merchants accept it. In some Chinese cities people can use it to pay their utility bills.

中国有成千上万的小老板，但只有一个落后的金融系统。2004年，为了进一步推动网上交易，马云设立了一个在线支付平台——支付宝。支付宝的发展大大得益于中国过去对贝宝的禁令，贝宝是支付宝的主要竞争对手，该禁令一直持续到最近才得以解除。据支付宝宣称，目前它已经拥有4亿7千万用户，遍布全球，而且被超过50万的中国商家所采用。在一些中国的城市，人们甚至可以通过支付宝支付水电费。

Mr Ma has also started a service called Ali-loan. He does not lend money, but works with banks, which typically have no idea if a small borrower is creditworthy. Mr Ma, in contrast, has a trove of data revealing whether small firms pay their bills on time. He can also bundle together firms that know each other, so that a seller can help guarantee a bank loan to a regular customer. According to Alibaba the proportion of Ali-loan’s lending that goes bad is a trifling 0.35%, which suggests that the service could be expanded fast.

马云还开通了一项叫做阿里贷款的服务。他自己不借钱给他人，而是与银行合作。银行一般无从得知小额贷款者的信誉度，相反，马云则有数据库可以查到小公司是否按期付款。他还可以将一些相互认识的公司绑定，这样，一个卖家就能为它的常客作信用担保人。据阿里巴巴称，阿里贷款的坏账率只有0.35%，这个微小的数字意味着这项服务潜力无限。

The firm faces several obstacles. First, the Chinese internet market is cut-throat and evolving fast. Baidu, the country’s leading search engine, has not yet attacked Alibaba head on, but one day it might. Second, talent is in short supply. Wages for the best engineers and managers are soaring.

阿里巴巴也面临着一些难题。首先，中国互联网市场风云变幻，竞争激烈。百度，中国领先的搜索引擎公司，还不曾与阿里巴巴发生过正面冲突，但是难保哪天会发生。其次，人才供不应求，高级工程人员和经理人员的薪酬一路飞涨。

Third, in its rush to grow, Alibaba has neglected to make much profit. Its main services are free, with sellers paying only for extras such as being bumped to the top of a list of search results. Mr Ma says this is deliberate: size will eventually bring rewards. But investors will not wait for ever. Recognising this, Alibaba.com, the listed part of the group (most of which is private), promised in December to pay a special dividend of $140m in January.

第三，在阿里巴巴全力冲刺以图成长的同时，它忽视了盈利。阿里巴巴的主要服务都是免费的，卖家只支付一些额外的费用，比如希望在搜索结果中排位靠前。马云声称这是经过深思熟虑的，因为他相信规模效应。但是，投资者可等不了那么久。意识到这一点，阿里巴巴网站——集团上市的部分（集团大部分是私有的），12月份承诺将在明年1月份支付1亿4千万美元的额外红利。

Half a billion credit histories

五亿信贷记录

Alibaba has a huge and barely exploited asset: the data it has gathered on the spending habits of China’s emerging middle class. The firm is cagey about what, exactly, it will do with these data, and insists that it will not violate anyone’s privacy.

阿里巴巴有一项巨大但尚未开发的资产：关于中国新兴中产阶级消费习惯的数据。但是，公司对于如何运用这些数据相当谨慎，而且坚称绝不会侵犯任何个人隐私。

Nonetheless, there are ways in which Alibaba could profit from what it knows. One idea might be to use customer data to identify trends and so help companies to anticipate what consumers want. Given the paucity of accurate data in China, this would be extremely valuable.

尽管如此，因为它所掌握的信息，阿里巴巴总可以找到获利的途径。其中一条就是利用客户数据判断趋势，进而帮助企业预测顾客的需求。这在缺乏准确数据的中国，显得尤为宝贵。

Another promising area might be credit. Ali-loan does not charge for its credit-scoring service for business borrowers, and says it has no plans to. But it would make sense: a small fee on each loan would be almost pure profit. And there is no practical reason why the group should limit itself to helping businesses borrow money. Another glittering prize would be to help Chinese consumers obtain credit, too. Very few can do so at the moment. Many would doubtless like to.

另一条大有可为的途径就是贷款。阿里贷款目前尚未向其贷款者收取信用评分服务的费用，公司也称不打算这样做。但是，这确实有利可图：对每一项贷款收取的费用几乎就是纯利润。而且，公司也没有现实理由限制自身只帮助商家获取贷款。帮助中国消费者获得贷款也是一个有吸引力的领域。目前很少有公司可以做到，但很多公司可能想这么做。

This is a politically sensitive area, however. The government largely controls the allocation of credit in China. Through state-controlled banks, it funnels the nation’s savings to large, politically favoured firms. Would an expansion of credit to the little people be seen as a threat to this cosy arrangement? Some in government probably think it a good idea to help small businesses and even consumers get loans, but others are cautious. The Communist Party is terrified of credit bubbles, the bursting of which might spark unrest. So Mr Ma must tread carefully.

然而，这是一个政治敏感地带。在中国，信贷的分配主要由国家控制。它通过国有银行，将中国的存款主要注入到大型的政府扶持企业中。将贷款更多地分配给小型商家和消费者，会不会被视为是对目前这种对于大型国企来说较为舒适的安排的威胁呢？有一些政府官员可能会认为帮助小型企业甚至消费者取得贷款是个好主意，但是其他人却持谨慎的态度。共产党担心信贷泡沫的破灭将引起社会动荡。所以，马云必须三思而后行。

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Correction: PayPal
Jan 13th 2011 | from PRINT EDITION
PayPal was not formally banned in China, as we implied in a recent article (“China’s king of e-
commerce”, January 1st). However, between 2005 and 2010 a draft law was circulated,
threatening to ban majority foreign-owned payments firms. This had the effect of inhibiting the
company’s participation in the Chinese market.