Alibaba CEO and founder Jack Ma reassured concerned citizens that China is just transforming to a consumer driven economy. Ma also said that China is attempting to shift from an export to an import driven economy.
During the World Economic Forum in Davos on Jan. 20, Friday, Ma said that consumption, services, and new high-tech businesses are going up while traditional services are going down. Markets should not be concerned about the cooling of the world's second-largest economy, Ma told RT.
Ma continued to say that while the next two or three years may be challenging, the job market is still present and China's consumption continues to grow. China's 300 million middle class people is expected to grow to 500 million in 10-15 years which is an opportunity not only for the country, but for the world.
In November 2015, Ma said that the coming year would be rocky due to his homeland's economic transition and because of its crackdown on government employees involved in excessive spending, CNBC reported.
He however added that once the Chinese economy is clean and transparent, the next 15 years would be good times for the country.
Meanwhile, Ma mentioned that his Chinese e-commerce giant is interested in buying Russian goods and yuan-ruble bilateral trade. Despite the huge potential in Russian goods, there is still a lot of improvement to be done in infrastructure, roads, logistics and pay.
Alibaba is a Chinese e-commerce company that has over 10 million businesses of all sizes selling on its website. The company also helps businesses by opening up a marketplace along with providing computing power, payment and logistics systems.
On Nov. 11, 2015, the e-commerce conglomerate generated $14.32 billion in gross merchandise volume (GMV) on China's Singles Day, known as the world's largest 24-hour online shopping event. The figures were up by 60 percent from 2014 at $9.3 billion and went above the $2.4 billion sold on Cyber Monday, the largest online sales day in the United States.
Ma is the first entrepreneur from Mainland China to appear on the cover of Forbes magazine. He is the second richest man in China and the 33rd richest man in the world as of 2015 with a net worth of $22.7 billion. Check out Ma's speech on how to find opportunities below: