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In the Hutong
And…We’re Back!
1151 hrs.
Amidst all of the recent speculation about Alibaba, Jack Ma, and his intentions toward Yahoo!, the real story keeps slipping below the fold: Jack Ma’s pledge to spend a year living in the United States. It is hard to discern whether that was a genuine promise or a trial balloon, but let’s assume that Jack intends to carry through on it.
Mr. Ma deserves praise for what cannot be an easy move. He appears to understand that if you are going to do business in one of the most complex and competitive markets in the world, you had better know that market in your guts, and not designate some subordinate to do that understanding for you. It is long past time for American and European CEOs to start doing the same in China. We are waiting for the first one to do so, and that little problem is a factor in the challenges that foreign companies face here.
Yet if Mr. Ma believes that his expressed desire to live in America will soften the discomfort of the American public and the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States will feel toward the purchase of Yahoo! by a Chinese company, he is too late. Assuring both Washington DC and Main Street USA that Alibaba is not the long arm of the Party and is trustworthy enough to be the custodian of a massive storehouse of information on American citizens will demand a lengthy campaign, not well-meaning gestures. A year under American law building visibility, accessibility, and trust is a good start, but no more, and any bid for Yahoo is likely to happen sooner than that.
Finally, before venturing into the North American wilds, both Alibaba and Mr. Ma would do well to consider an adjustment in their approach to the global media. I spend a lot of time with journalists who represent the world’s leading media outlets in China, and whenever the subject of Alibaba comes up, the response is always a shaking of the head. The word is that not only does Mr. Ma appear increasingly inaccessible to the global media, his international PR staff is allegedly not above haranguing journalists whose coverage of Alibaba is deemed less than supportive. If true, this is an approach that will make neither Ma nor Alibaba many friends in the United States. The primary coverage of the company is still going to come from China, and alienating foreign correspondents ill-serves the purposes of a company with audiences outside of the PRC. The global media can be allies or enemies in Alibaba’s leap abroad, an effort that will demand the help of all the friends the company can get. At the moment, that list of friends – inside the Beltway, across America, and in the fourth estate – seems a bit short for Alibaba’s ambitions.
Time to change that.
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