Nicholas Carlson
Alibaba CEO Jack Ma and the WSJ's Dennis Berman
Jack Ma gave a keynote interview at the Wall Street Journal's tech conference tonight. Here's a few things he said:- Ma says he bought half of a soccer team because its owner got him drunk on night. Bloomberg had more details on the story in June.
- Ma says the Chinese government is happy with him because he created 14 million jobs.
- Ma says he can't get used to being praised. He's used to being the underdog.
- Ma says the "Hong Kong problem" is not about China. It's that the young people don't have hope.
- Asked if Americans are too soft, he says that America is "too hard." "You're everywhere."
- He says that there was a lot of "Yes we can" in 2008, but not a lot of "how we can."
- Ma says it's too early for Alibaba to be thinking about buying and selling American tech companies, such as eBay.
- He says he doesn't want to buy PayPal: "I have my Alipay."
- Ma says he learned how to make a speech from watching Whitney Houston sing in the movie Bodyguard.
- He says China is going to be the largest movie market in the world, with 200 million middle class people.
- "Never worry too much about the government." He says 15 years ago, everyone told him not to get into the Internet business because of the government. He says likeweise, the Chinese government won't keep him out of the movie business.