Disheveled hair, slender teenage silhouette, more fan of the hoodie than the tie suit, seasoned speaker seen on stage dressed in Michael Jackson or transvestite as an Indian Mohawk singing Elton John on the occasion of an Alibaba birthday, the global e-commerce giant he founded twenty-two years ago ...
At 56 years old, Jack Ma, the richest retired self-made man in the Middle Empire with a meteoric rise, collects both disguises and risky bets and nicknames.
Evil tongues call him "ET" in reference to his bulging skull.
He prefers "master Feng QingYang", hero and sword master of a martial arts novel.
The man, used to negotiating directly with the most powerful in this world, has also often compared himself to Forrest Gump ... Insane poker moves, hectic life, explosive success despite the headwinds: their trajectories have some common points.
A decisive encounter with an Australian family
Jack Ma was born Ma Yun (cloud, in Chinese) on September 10, 1964, in Hangzhou, a city in Zhejiang Province, east China.
His mother is a worker, his father a photographer.
In 1978, the government launched the “open door” policy.
He is 14 years old, an overflowing curiosity and an ogre appetite.
In the region, the number of tourists is exploding.
The teenager offers guided tours in exchange for lessons.
He will gain the acquisition of a language and the first name of Jack, attributed by an American tourist.
Later, a meeting with an Australian family, the Morleys, will be decisive.
Ken, the father, brings him on vacation to Australia and will help him financially at key times in his life.
Having become an English teacher after failing twice in the gaokao, the equivalent of the baccalaureate, young Jack founded an interpreting agency which flopped.
The government then called on his talents as a translator to resolve a dispute with a company in the United States.
He brings back a used computer from Seattle
Jack Ma discovers the United States and the Internet.
He is almost 30 years old and it's a shock.
He returns to China with, in his suitcase, a nugget: an old computer bought for 386 dollars (about 314 euros) in Seattle.
In 1995, the Internet arrived in China and Jack Ma had a crazy project for an online directory: China pages.
After two years of existence, the project is failing.
He then headed for Beijing and created on behalf of the government an online trading platform responsible for promoting Chinese companies.
Aware of the possibilities of the Internet, in 1999, he left his life as a senior civil servant, borrowed 60,000 dollars (49,000 euros) and founded Alibaba, a site which allows Chinese SMEs to post free ads.
Goldman Sachs and SoftBank agree to support it.
The success story can begin.
Jack Ma expands its offer with Alipay, an online payment system and oust the American eBay from China.
A great entrepreneur for Donald Trump
In 2015, he took over the Hong Kong daily South China Morning Post and was interviewed by the President of the United States, Barack Obama, in person, during an Asia Pacific summit.
In January 2017, Donald Trump received him.
"He's a great, great entrepreneur," said the American billionaire seven times less wealthy than him.
Jack Ma then hopes to remove the Taobao site from the American blacklist of companies practicing counterfeiting.
Hardly lost, the seduction operation is a failure.
He is said to be sensitive, unstable, brawler ... Used to shocking formulas, he readily emphasizes the pitfalls that have marked his history in order to learn lessons.
“We learn nothing from other people's successes but more from their mistakes,” explains the entrepreneur in January 2018 at the World Economic Forum in Davos.
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Others mentioned to him by the beginnings of Alibaba: crowded employees forced to eat and sleep there, total disorganization ... Before suffering the wrath of the real boss of China, President Xi Jinping, Jack Ma had achieved another feat in China: communicate in all directions on the need to fight against pollution in big cities and encourage Chinese billionaires to engage in philanthropic actions.
