Last week Jack Ma, the executive chairman of the online-commerce company Alibaba, went to Detroit to convince Americans that China and e-commerce could save small businesses. The Chinese billionaire paced around a huge stage, TED talk–style, trying to inspire U.S. entrepreneurs to strive for greatness. Alibaba is not known for subtlety or understatement, and the event did not disappoint. Charlie Rose and Martha Stewart appeared onstage, as did a group of drummers suspended in midair.

Ma is right, in least in theory, to urge these businesses to consider China. By 2015, China’s online retail market was the largest in the world—80 percent bigger than that of the United States. Cross-border consumer e-commerce was valued at $40 billion. The opportunity is expanding. Within five years there could be more than 600 million people in China’s middle class. And thanks to the Internet, it’s easier than ever for U.S. companies to reach them.

Just ask Veronica Pedersen, CEO of Timeless Skin Care, a family business based in Rancho Cucamonga, California. Timeless, which sells anti-aging serums and creams, works with a distributor to sell products to China on Alibaba’s Taobao Global shopping site. Last year Timeless brought in just under $5 million in revenue, according to the company, with sales in China accounting for more than half of that. Pedersen refers to her company as “mom-and-pop e-commerce.” Timeless, which has around 20 employees, is not aiming to conquer China. “If you are able to tap 1 percent of the Chinese market, you’re in business,” Pedersen says.

Alibaba claims to be the world’s largest retail commerce company, with annual revenue of nearly $23 billion. Last year, American goods ranked number two for imported products on Alibaba’s Tmall marketplace. Best-selling product categories include apparel, fresh food, mother and baby products, health supplements, and electronics. Many Chinese consumers are tired of worrying about food and product safety. They don’t want fake vitamins or dangerous baby products, and a U.S. label can signal quality. “The Chinese consumer is much more aware than American consumers of where everything is manufactured,” says Pedersen. “Our strategy in the Chinese market is about ‘Made in the USA.’”

Timeless is one of a handful of success stories that Alibaba showcased at its Gateway ’17 event in Detroit. The conference, which had some 3,000 attendees, was targeted at owners of small and medium-size businesses, as well as farmers, who want to learn more about how to sell their products to China. Keynotes and breakout sessions celebrated the Chinese opportunity and offered tips on how to sell on Alibaba.

Earlier this year Ma had told President Donald Trump that he intended to create a million U.S. jobs, and the event was a step toward fulfilling that promise. “If we can help one million small businesses online and each small business can create one job, we can create more than one million jobs,” Ma said in Detroit.

Getting all those small U.S. businesses onto Alibaba won’t be easy, and not for the reasons you’d think. Neither the Chinese nor the U.S. government is posing the biggest obstacles to Ma’s vision, at least for now. Instead, one of Alibaba’s key challenges will be to change the way Americans think about China—and about themselves. Americans will need to view China as a market and the U.S. as a seller, rather than the other way around. “U.S. companies have had the luxury of having a strong local market,” said Joshua Halpern, director of the eCommerce Innovation lab at the U.S. Department of Commerce. “So after building a brand in the U.S. your first step out of your house is not going to be to the largest, most challenging market in the world.”