马云给股东的一封信A letter from Jack Ma to shareholders
青岛希尼尔翻译咨询有限公司（www.sinosenior.com）整理发布 2015-10-18
青岛希尼尔翻译公司（www.sinosenior.com）2015年10月18日了解到：马云近日给股东的一封公开信A letter from Jack Ma to shareholders
Dear Alibaba Group Shareholders,
I would like to take this opportunity, on behalf of everyone at Alibaba
Group, to express my deepest appreciation to our customers, employees,
investors and partners who have believed in us and supported us over the
past year as we embarked on our journey as a public company.
值此佳际，我代表阿里巴巴集团的每一位成员，向我们的客户，员工，投资方以及在过去一年的上市之路上，一直信任和支持我们的合作伙伴致以我最深的感激。
It has been a volatile time for global markets, and we have watched
these developments closely. We have a clear vision of where Alibaba is
and where it’s headed. Over the past year we have become healthier,
stronger and more confident and have made great progress in our
strategic development.
What I said on the occasion of our IPO last year when we raised US$25
billion bears repeating. What we earned was not money, but trust.
Maintaining that trust means we must listen carefully to the views of
others. It also means we must reflect on the challenges we have when
communicating with our shareholders and the public. The majority of our
products and services are not accessible outside China, which makes it
difficult for our overseas shareholders and stakeholders to fully
understand the company and what it is like to be an Alibaba customer. As
a result, many are trying to understand us through the lens of an
outsider and may not have a full or accurate understanding of who we are
and what we do.
So, I would like to share some of our thoughts about Alibaba Group here
with you:
I. ALIBABA GROUP’S STRATEGY IS TO BUILD THE INFRASTRUCTURE OF COMMERCE
FOR THE FUTURE. E?COMMERCE IS ONLY THE FIRST STEP.
Many people confuse us with other e?commerce retailers and therefore
assess our business model solely on the basis of the growth rate of our
gross merchandise volume (GMV). In fact, this narrow definition of
e?commerce is only a fraction of the Alibaba Group strategy. What we are
building is an open, transparent and collaborative infrastructure for
commerce.
At the end of June 2015, Alibaba Group has 34,000 employees, and fewer
than 10,000 of those employees are directly involved in our China retail
marketplaces and related GMV. Our platform model is highly efficient as
we generate close to RMB3 trillion GMV at an average of nearly RMB300
million per person. We continue to improve our technology and products
in order to win market share through innovation and technology — we
never rely on the strategy of simply increasing headcount. In the coming
years, we will have the opportunity and capability to build the most
efficient business organization among the large global companies while
creating the most job opportunities through our ecosystem.
Setting aside the employees working on our China retail marketplaces,
our B2B business and backroom operations teams, close to half of
Alibaba’s workforce is focused on building businesses that have
long-term strategic importance. We firmly believe that only by investing
in the future and adhering firmly to our long-term strategy will Alibaba
have a true future.
It is only through Internet technology and big data that we can
establish a truly meaningful innovative infrastructure for commerce that
will provide comprehensive support to small and medium-sized
enterprises. The less developed business infrastructure in China
provides Alibaba a unique opportunity to create the infrastructure of
China’s future commerce, not just the infrastructure of e?commerce.
Around half of Alibaba Group’s workforce and our affiliated companies,
including Ant Financial and Cainiao, are working on important areas of
our ecosystem, including logistics, Internet finance, big data, cloud
computing, mobile Internet, advertising and the so-called double H
industries — Health and Happiness (the big data-based healthcare and
digital entertainment businesses which will take 10 years to become
data-driven).
Today, Cainiao, our logistics affiliate, helps handle around 10 billion
packages every year; our affiliated Internet financial arm serves more
than 400 million active users; our cloud computing business, which is
maintaining an annual growth rate of over 100%, is taking a leading role
in the world; and our mobile-based products, including search, map and
browsers, are providing vital infrastructure services to Chinese users.
In the future, we will continue to provide a broad spectrum of services
to tens of millions of Chinese companies, spanning e?commerce, financial
services, logistics, cloud computing and big data, marketing, and
cross-border trading services.
Our strategy is long-term, so although the above new platforms we are
building are still in progress and have yet to yield substantial
revenue, their prospects are exciting and we are making headway.
We firmly believe the era of heavy business conglomerates is gone. The
economy of today and tomorrow will rely on a platform and ecosystem
approach. Sustainable growth can only be achieved when enterprises
operate within an ecosystem, participate in collective development and
share common interests.
Today, some of our strategic businesses are yielding initial results.
Take logistics as an example. In fiscal year 2015, Alibaba generated
more than 24 million packages on a daily basis handled by the more than
one million delivery personnel employed by our logistics partners. We
expect that in 10 years, the number of delivery personnel in China will
exceed 10 million. This growth will be driven by social forces rather
than by any single company. We also believe that over the next three
years, Cainiao’s unique services will bring significant changes to the
logistics sector and users will be able to enjoy enhanced and
standardized services. Logistics will become a standard offering of
e?commerce companies rather than a core competence. Therefore, Cainiao’s
mission is to enable delivery firms to provide standardized and
formalized services.
I. CHINA’S ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT AND ITS RELATIONSHIP WITH ALIBABA GROUP
Recently, signals of China’s economic slowdown have triggered widespread
concern and, I believe, overreaction around the world. This reaction
illustrates how China’s economy has been fully integrated into the world
economy with a considerable degree of influence. However, we believe an
economy that continues to experience such rapid growth is neither
realistic nor sustainable and China shouldn’t aim for such growth.
For example, the cost of high-speed economic growth has been the
destruction of ecological resources. After many government vows to
upgrade the economy, the financial crisis in 2008, fatigue in investment
and exports and unrealistic expectations of ever-faster growth, China’s
economy has reached a point where it must upgrade and update. The
current GDP growth pattern is not sustainable. In fact, if China
continues to pursue the high growth rates of the past, then China will
pay a high price.
I firmly believe that for the future, the advantages of a slowdown in
China’s economic prospects far outweigh the disadvantages. China’s
economic development is no longer in need of increasing its numbers, but
of increasing its quality. China is the world’s second-largest economy,
and even with a GDP growth rate of 5%, the growth rate is more than
double that of developed economies.
In the past 30 years, the Chinese economy has benefited from the
liberalization of thinking and a more open economic policy. However, we
have not focused on fostering the creativity and innovation of people,
which is the most important factor in stimulating productivity. High GDP
growth relies on the capacity of manufacturing, while the improvement in
quality of life relies on innovation. I believe there is much more we
can do in this regard.
China’s economy is transitioning from an export sales-driven economy to
a domestic-consumption economy, and from investing in infrastructure to
operating infrastructure. China will use advanced technology and a new
market-driven approach to solve the issue of sustainable development.
All in all, China’s economy has immense potential. It will not be easy,
but China’s future “economic miracle” will lie in its ability to boost
productivity and its use of big data and Internet technology to
stimulate domestic consumption and generate exponential development
opportunities.
Will the economic slowdown have any impact on Alibaba?
At the end of March 2015, the GMV of Alibaba’s China retail marketplaces
had already reached RMB2.44 trillion, accounting for 9% of China’s
retail consumption. We predict that over 50% of China’s consumption will
be conducted online within 10 years, and that means massive potential
for the e?commerce market. On this basis, more than 80% of China’s
enterprises will need to use an Internet-based e?commerce platform,
logistics network, financial services, cloud computing and cross-border
services. Alibaba’s investments today will make this possible. Our
business is no doubt closely related to the Chinese economy, and we
believe the services Alibaba Group will provide in the future will be
the fourth indispensable resource for enterprises, after water,
electricity and land.
I do not agree with the notion that consumption will decline as economic
growth slows. It is inaccurate to think that the slowdown of the Chinese
economy means that Chinese people are unwilling to spend. The Chinese
lifestyle philosophy is different from that of the West. Consumers in
developed Western economies are good at spending the money they believe
they will earn in the future. To the contrary, Chinese people are
constantly saving for the future. The saving rates in China are some of
the highest in the world. During economic downturns, Western consumers
may have trouble borrowing to maintain their lifestyles, but their
Chinese counterparts have savings for retirement or for times of crisis.
Therefore, slower economic growth does not mean declining purchasing
power. With the convenience and value-for-money merchandise offered by
e?commerce, consumers are becoming more and more willing to shop online.
China’s middle-class population is close to 300 million and in 10 years,
that number is going to reach 500 million. Yet the level of consumption
among the middle class is still well below their income level. Bearing
in mind that consumption is triggered by innovation, it follows that
Alibaba’s business model will be a strong driver of domestic consumption
in China going forward. This is clearly illustrated by the consumption
volume of Alibaba’s 11.11 Global Shopping Festival. China does not lack
domestic consumption power. Being thoughtful about how to ignite that
power is the key. Whether it is about facilitating imports, driving
domestic demand in tier 3 and 4 cities or unleashing the purchasing
power of a rural population more than 600 million strong, Alibaba has a
great deal to offer.
Great companies are born in challenging times. We believe the
transformation of the Chinese economy from a focus on quantity to
quality will lead to the formation of some of the world’s most
remarkable enterprises. Alibaba hopes it will become one of them.
I. FUTURE DEVELOPMENTS: GLOBALIZATION, RURAL DEVELOPMENT AND BIG DATA
CLOUD COMPUTING
Our key priorities for the next decade will be globalization,
development of the rural economy and big data.
In terms of globalization, we aim to help small- to medium-sized
businesses around the world expand beyond their borders by leveraging
the power of e?commerce, Internet financing, big data, and marketing and
logistics platforms. We believe the experience of Alibaba Group in China
can be applied globally, giving all SMEs the opportunity to participate
and compete in a transparent and fair marketplace. We further believe
that future economic globalization will allow consumers everywhere to
access a truly global purchasing experience. We have been preparing for
a considerable amount of time to make this vision a reality. It may take
another one or two decades to complete the mission, but we won’t quit
until we live up to our true mission “to make it easy to do business
anywhere.”
China has a rural population of more than 600 million, and the business
infrastructure in China’s rural areas is poor. However, with the growing
popularity of mobile phones, tremendous changes have taken place in
these areas. Taobao Marketplace and Tmall, in particular, link farmers
directly with urban life. We are now renovating rural infrastructure by
leveraging mobile Internet technology, big data, logistics and Internet
financing. We do this not only because of the tremendous market
potential, but also to close the digital divide, promote information
equity and help alleviate poverty through economic opportunity. We are
witnessing great changes in China’s countryside, and we encourage our
shareholders to visit China’s rural areas to see these changes for
themselves. What we are doing today may become a development model for
many developing countries in the future. At this historic time, Alibaba
Group must embrace change, invest in change and drive change.
Over the past six years, Alibaba Group has made a significant strategic
investment in cloud computing and big data services. We believe that
mankind is departing the IT era and entering a new era of DT (data
technology). In the society of tomorrow, data will be the most important
means of production, innovation and social development. People and data
will be interwoven. We must continue to invest in the development of
data technology. Alibaba is fundamentally a data-driven company. We
firmly believe that we will see substantial returns from the investments
we have made in data and related technologies over the past six years
and will continue to make in years to come. Still in its infancy, we are
working to make data and cloud computing the foundation for an inclusive
economy. The future potential is massive.
ALIBABA’S CHALLENGE
Alibaba has challenges, but what concerns us may be different from what
some may think, and we never shy away from talking about competition or
our competitors. Over the past 16 years, we’ve never been short of
competitors, nor have we benefited from any form of protection. We’ve
blazed our own trail through fierce market competition. We have learned
to survive while maintaining our ideals and values. It hasn’t been easy.
We have never been afraid of confronting new challenges. We excel over
our competition by engaging in effective strategic planning and flawless
execution.
Alibaba seeks to initiate a business revolution. Our future is the
infrastructure of commerce. We are in the business of enabling sales
transactions — this means we never compete with the businesses on our
platforms. Our so-called competitors are also businesses that we want to
support and help scale. In other words, it is not appropriate and an
oversimplification to view companies that are engaged in e?commerce as
competitors to the Alibaba Group. Comparing us to other e?commerce
companies is not an apples-to-apples comparison. In our case, our
relationship with merchants on our platform is more like apples and the
apple tree.
Our biggest challenge is not our competition, but our ability to grasp
the future and manage ourselves. With our ambitious vision and unique
ecosystem, we need professional talents from different fields, a unique
culture and an organization that can adapt to future developments. Our
colossal business ecosystem and intertwined structure will require not
just more corporate managers, but leaders, innovators and trailblazers.
This is a tremendous challenge for a 16-year-old company with a
workforce with an average age of only 29. There is almost no reference
for us when we develop our talents, corporate culture, management model,
and the relationship between our business units and government
departments. As a young company, we are committed to a mighty challenge,
one that’s unprecedented and beyond the imagination. But this is a
golden opportunity. We have told ourselves over the past 16 years: If
not now, when? If not us, who?
This is the first letter I have published since the IPO on my thoughts
about Alibaba’s development strategy to our investors. Thank you again
for investing in us and being part of the development of a future
business ecosystem. We are grateful for the trust you have placed in us
and what we will accomplish in the future.
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