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Once seen, it at cannot be unseen. Last year’s video of the diamond-gloved, pelvis thrusting, Michael Jackson-uniformed boss of Asia’s most valuable company – Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba – dancing in front of a stunned and then cheering crowd of employees at the firm’s annual party is a sight to behold. It's one for the history book of corporate entertainment.

Jack Ma isn’t your ordinary chairman. The 54-year-old has also starred in a Kung Fu movie alongside Jet Li and once entertained staff with songs from The Lion King. Now he’s got just one more year to pull off exuberant stunts as a chairman. After that, on September 10, 2019, Ma will pass on the reins to the man he’s been long preparing for the job: the company’s chief executive, 46-year-old Daniel Zhang.


Zhang has an impressive track record. He is the mastermind behind the biggest sales bonanza on the planet - Singles’ Day, held annually on November 11, or 11.11 (four ones to represent four single people). Launched in 2009, years before Amazon invented its Prime Day, Singles’ Day is now the world’s largest retail event, topping $25 billion in sales for Alibaba alone, which makes it four times the size of Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales combined – and that’s before Alibaba’s competitors get in on the action. For Alibaba, some 140,000 brands took part in the event, offering their products on Taobao and Tmall, the company’s business-to-consumer platform, also created by Zhang.

Zhang is being watched with both curiosity and anticipation. He’s more pragmatic and more reserved than Ma, but then most of China’s (and the world’s) business elites are more reserved than Ma, who has a rather unique leadership style. “Where Jack was the bold visionary and organisation builder, Daniel is more of the shrewd strategist and operator. Climb into the ring with either and you will probably get knocked out,” says Jeffrey Towson, a business professor at Beijing University. Alibaba, he adds, is the stomping ground for some 66,000 of the smartest people in China. How smart do you have to be to be at the top of that pyramid? “Daniel is widely regarded as crazy smart and very tough,” Towson says.

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Jack Ma, chairman of Alibaba group, dancing to a medley of Michael Jackson songs during the Alibaba Annual Party on 18 September, 2017 Getty Images

That might be so, but where will Zhang take Alibaba? Ma has managed to get the e-commerce giant to very top of retail in Asia – will Zhang now take it global?


Expanding the company’s global reach will be a priority, says David Madden, an analyst at CMC Markets. Alibaba is now aiming for half of its revenue to be international. Ma wants it to become the fifth largest economy – so it has to go global by default. And it’s already happening, in four main ways: connecting foreign merchants with Chinese consumers, following Chinese consumers as they go abroad, strategically expanding the platform across Asia, and being smart and opportunistic everywhere else. All these approaches are consistent with Alibaba's number one strategy, says Towson, which is to build from its advantages.

Despite taking baby steps in all these directions, Zhang inherits Alibaba at a tricky time. China’s trade war with the US isn’t helping the company in the slightest, impacting on its aims to connect US merchants with customers back home in China. Then there is Alibaba’s domestic rivalry with e-commerce giant Tencent, which shows no sign of easing off. It forces the company to spend massively on both innovation and promotion, to lure and keep shoppers and brands. And there are heavy costs springing from Alibaba’s New Retail concept, which combines online shopping with bricks-and-mortar supermarkets.

Right now, the UK is the third biggest market for Alibaba, and the company’s London-based team is working hard to make shopping easier for Chinese consumers abroad, part of the company’s expansion strategy. Eyeing Western consumers is also plausible, but not part of the plan for the next couple of years, says the company’s managing director in the UK, David Lloyd. At the moment, Chinese as well as other Asian customers are a priority. And there are many of them. Just two years ago, there were some 250 million buyers; today it’s 550 million – and Ma has recently pledged to get to two billion consumers by 2036. Well, it will now be up to Zhang to deliver on this ambitious vision.

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Zhang is a known quantity not just at Alibaba, but in the global business world. He’s been with the company for 11 years – and the past three years as CEO, effectively managing the firm, with Ma acting more and more as its figurehead. Under Zhang, Alibaba has switched from PC-based transactions to mobile, which now accounts for about 80 per cent of entire gross merchandise volume.


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Just like many Alibaba employees, Zhang sports a nickname inside the company – Xiaoyaozi, the name of a character in a Chinese martial arts novel. It literally means ‘free and unfettered one’ – possibly a reference to the character who stays out of battles, but is great at training others. He reportedly has even used this nickname on his business cards.

With a diploma in accounting from Shanghai University of Finance and Economics, Zhang first worked as a senior manager at global auditor PriceWaterhouseCoopers and then chief financial officer at Shanda Interactive Entertainment, a leading Chinese developer of online games. He joined Taobao, the Alibaba-owned e-commerce site, as chief financial officer in 2007. He stayed, climbing the ladder – becoming chief operating officer before taking over the chief executive role from Jonathan Lu in 2015. Zhang has also been seen a lot in the West, frequently appearing at the World Economic Forum in Davos and other high-profile events. “With a strong finance background, he can also build more confidence with investors,” says Jason Yu, general manager of Kantar Worldpanel China, a company analysing consumer behaviour.

Gaining more and more hands-on experience running various subsidiaries of Alibaba has certainly been the perfect training ground for the chairman role, says Madden. “It sounds like he has been waiting for this opportunity for some time, so I’m sure he will have fresh ideas,” he adds.

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“In the world of business, the excitement never ends, the competition never ends. You must keep awake every minute; you need to keep your eyes open in your sleep. You must keep learning and innovating,” Zhang said in an interview earlier this year. He’s already doing just that.

In his letter to staff and shareholders, Ma praised Zhang for delivering 13 consecutive quarters of “consistent and sustainable growth” – with the stock price surging despite the Chinese economy cooling in recent years. Since 2015, the company’s stock has grown 87 per cent and Alibaba has added some $200 billion to its market value, bringing it to around $420 billion – surpassing rival Tencent.

After 19 years at the helm, Ma’s decision to stand down isn’t sudden, even if it may seem so from the outside, says Matthew Wong, managing intelligence analyst at CB Insights. “It shouldn't cause any major unexpected shifts within the company as the narrative around his retirement has been building for a long time,” he adds.

After all, Ma is handing over a hugely successful company with great prospects to someone he trusts and has personally trained for the job for years – and someone who’s been doing the day-to-day management since 2015. “Bosses who stay on too long damage the company as it gives off the impression that you are no longer cutting the mustard and you are only hanging in there to repair your image,” says Madden.

Ma isn’t disappearing completely though – he will remain a director on Alibaba's board and a permanent member of the Alibaba Partnership, still working with Zhang. “They complement each other well,” says Yu. While Ma can come across as more visionary and “passionate to influence the world at a higher level,” Zhang is likely seen as more rational and strategically-minded.

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Under Ma’s leadership – but with Zhang effectively executing Ma’s vision seamlessly – Alibaba has brought in a number of innovations, such as combining online and offline retail and investing heavily in artificial intelligence and cloud computing. Take Tmall, the largest business-to-consumer retail platform in Asia. It’s a virtual marketplace, probably very alien to most Western consumers, but the marketplace of choice for many Chinese. Tmall is active in the West too, but at the moment it mainly aims to connect businesses from Europe and elsewhere with Chinese consumers.

Here’s how it works. Instead of going to a website owned by a retailer or a brand, you head to Tmall.com. It’s a mall, but nothing like your brick-and-mortar shopping centre with escalators snaking to the top floor and a food court teeming with tables like a school canteen. The idea, though, is the same. When shoppers want to find, say, a pair of headphones, they don’t go to Apple.com. Instead, they will go to Apple.Tmall.com, browse for Apple products, and can click on the ‘home’ Tmall icon anytime to get out – to head to any of 140,000 other brands, all in one place. To buy, shoppers use Alipay, a mobile and online payment platform. Chinese tourists coming to the UK can go on Tmall and see which stores nearby accept Alipay.

Artificial intelligence has been a big focus in recent years, to understand the shopping behaviour of consumers on Tmall and improve their experience on the site, tailoring it. “We have at any one time maybe a billion and a half listings, so shoppers may need some help with curation – and AI helps get recommendation for brands and products,” says Lloyd.


Those who are into luxury get to enjoy a recently launched invite-only platform Luxury Pavilion, headed by a stylish-looking Frenchman Sébastien Badault. You click on an icon that only luxury shoppers can see and browse luxury brands and products from clothes, watches and skincare products to luxury cars – all in one place. The move makes sense, given that the Chinese are the world’s main luxury consumers, with 32 per cent of overall luxury sales.

Zhang has also been developing the company’s New Retail concept, fusing physical retail and e-commerce. Alibaba’s futuristic Hema supermarkets, launched in 2015 and already buzzing in 13 cities across China, offer deliveries within half an hour when you shop in store or on the app – no delivery slot booking needed.

Continuing to provide a premium shopping experience for millions of people a day is not an easy task though, and despite the tangible success of the past few years, Zhang does have pretty large shoes to fill. Connecting brands and consumers anywhere in the world is another priority for Alibaba in the near future, says Lloyd – with the aim of delivering any product from anywhere in the world to anyone within 72 hours. Will that happen during Zhang’s time as chairman? At Alibaba, it seems, anything is possible.