Jack Ma: The future has come

Chapter 25 Dialogue with the World (2)
As far as China is concerned, we started by buying New Zealand food today, but what we should really buy is New Zealand's environmental protection technology, environmental awareness and environmental protection philosophy.New Zealand's environmental protection concept and environmental protection technology have made New Zealand a country that is always sunny, healthy and innovative. I have real respect for such a country.Today, we are glad that there is still a pure land like New Zealand on the earth, and we are glad that we can buy seafood products from New Zealand that are free from pollution.We should go further to protect the blue sky and the sea, because they are closely related to our lives.

How to protect the environment of fishery resources and the environment of the atmosphere?New Zealand has paid a huge price to protect the environment. Not only the government, but also local enterprises and residents have made unimaginable efforts.There is a saying in China that "teaching a man to fish is worse than giving him a fish". I believe that our communication today is not only for doing business with each other, but more importantly is to understand each other, learn from each other's business philosophy, and protect the environment. protection technology.The protection of the environment is first of all the control of greed, and it is impossible for human beings to take unlimited demands from nature.China's economy is currently undergoing transformation. We realize that the rapid development of China's economy is unsustainable, and continuous demand can never achieve sustainable development. China's environment can no longer support the development of the entire traditional Chinese economic model.I also believe that China will be better in the next 10-15 years, because we have more countries to learn from and imitate.

Therefore, we need to move from traditional foreign trade investment and consumption to services, consumption and high technology. Although the process of transformation is full of pain, transformation is very necessary.I also hope that you can see the benefits of protecting the environment from New Zealand: our people have good food, water, soil and air, and a better life at the same time.For such a transformation, the Chinese are willing to bear no matter how much pain they suffer, and are willing to make great efforts.

As a Chinese consumer, I would like to thank New Zealand for producing such good and safe food; as the initiator and promoter of a new trade order, I would like to thank Mr. Prime Minister for promoting free trade between New Zealand and China; A resident of the earth, I would like to thank New Zealand for preserving such a wonderful place for the earth.

As a country with small resources, New Zealand needs to share technology and experience with other countries
Gung Ho! Jade Gray, founder of Pizza[16]: China's demand for resources is very strong now, and resource consumption is very fast. For a small country like New Zealand, how can we meet China's needs and protect the environment?

John Key: First of all, we are very proud that New Zealand has many excellent technologies and can make good use of resources.Our protection and management of seafood and marine life are very advanced, and of course we also protect land resources.We have many regulations, such as regulations on greenhouse gas emissions.Over the years, we have always ensured that the products we export are of high quality, impeccable from the perspective of consumption and food safety, which is in line with China's goals.In New Zealand, we cannot produce everything, we are far from the largest dairy producer in the world, we just export more.Our focus is to share our technology and experience with other countries, so that other places in the world, such as China, can use our technology when producing these products to meet local consumer demand.Therefore, we have to jointly develop technology.

Ma Yun: China's economy is not in decline, but in transformation, and the development of technology and services is very rapid.To give an example, last year our GMV (gross turnover) was US$5000 billion, and it will grow to US$1 trillion in a few years. One day last year we sold 5 oysters from New Zealand.We will continue to do purchases outside of China.However, the current population of China is about to reach 14 billion. If so many people keep eating, they will consume all the food produced in all countries. Therefore, in addition to importing, we need to develop technology to prevent damage to the environment.We believe this technology is critical.Through trade, we not only need to buy things, but also learn ideas, knowledge, technology, and a common belief of mankind.In the next five years, China should do the same.I appreciate and admire New Zealand, not only because New Zealand has great products, but also because of New Zealand's high degree of environmental protection and the friendliness of New Zealand people.I hope that in the next 5 years, China can also sell healthy and environmentally friendly products and technologies to the world, so we will soon launch a green consumption activity.We salute companies and manufacturers who protect the environment.

Suggestions for Chinese entrepreneurs investing in New Zealand

Ma Yun: Mr. Prime Minister, many Chinese entrepreneurs have never done business overseas before, and the environment we face may be different.So some things, they shouldn't do, they have to be careful, do you have any advice on that?
John Key: I think it is very important to understand the other party's culture, and we will respect the relevant requirements of investors.For example, a company in Shanghai bought a lot of farms in New Zealand, but these farms were about to go bankrupt.It's actually part of their application, and they've made a lot of promises about animal welfare, farm development, how they treat the whole farm operation, etc.I have to make sure you keep your promises, and since you're here to invest in New Zealand, be honest with us about what you can do.If you treat us with respect, we will treat you with the same, and we want partnerships.If some people come to New Zealand to invest and make serious commitments, but they don't honor their commitments and keep their word, then it will be very worrying.

Jack Ma: Thank you for your suggestion.I think this is what our club has to do, not only to do good things in China, but also abroad.China will go global in the next 10 or 20 years. How to become a good global citizen is the key.

How important is organic food
Melanie Rands, founder of ecostore[17]: Mr. Jack Ma, how important do you think organic food is?
Jack Ma: Organic food is very important.I don’t buy anything myself, but my wife does all her shopping online. Many things you find online are said to be organic, but I’m afraid there aren’t that many organic products in China. Chinese people are in urgent need of safe food.Today, New Zealand is expected to meet our needs, because New Zealand is a country that is relatively close to China. In this area, we can buy more organic food.At the same time, we also need to protect New Zealand's environment, not only buy their products, but also help them protect the environment.Organic food is becoming more and more popular, especially among young people.Now on the Internet, organic food sales are very hot, "organic" has become a search keyword, I am sure New Zealand's organic food will be very popular in China.However, I am more concerned about how to make the environment for producing organic food in New Zealand sustainable.

John Key: There is a question that New Zealanders are more interested in. New Zealand is a country that is partial to a corner. Seeing that China has such a large market, New Zealand companies want to export products to China. It is quite scary to think about it.Because China's system and culture are very different from ours, it is not easy to do business in China.One of the things that Alibaba has done is to build a bridge between the production base in New Zealand and the consumers in China.Mr. Ma Yun, can you also tell us, if a small company in New Zealand wants to sell something to China, it may be just some small things, how can it use Alibaba's platform to sell to China?

Ma Yun: Thank you, Mr. Prime Minister, for giving me such an opportunity to make a small advertisement.China's online consumption is amazing. If our payment system and logistics are better, we will do better. We launched the "Double 11" shopping festival seven years ago. We call it "Single Day".Now that seven years have passed, last year we sold 500 billion US dollars a day, and we don’t know how much we will sell this year.Young people especially like to shop online. Every year, 1.2 million people shop online on their mobile phones, and many of them come from abroad.I'm actually thinking about this kind of problem too. There are many small-scale businesses in New Zealand with good products and good services, but the merchants don't know how to sell them to China.There are hundreds of millions of young people in China, and they also have very good products.Therefore, we should have a docking mechanism. For example, we can hold a "blind date" after "Singles' Day" to connect product manufacturers and sellers.We have done this in Europe.We can hold training courses in New Zealand to train some trainers, and then let them train small businesses in New Zealand, telling them how to sell things to China, what the procedures are, how to pay, how to arrange logistics, and so on.We also have Ali Business School, which can invite New Zealand entrepreneurs to stay in China for two weeks and receive training.

In addition, we may open an Alibaba business embassy in New Zealand and invite great people to join our company and become our business ambassadors.This year's Singles' Day, I have a request to the Prime Minister and the delegation, if you have good products and services, please contact us, we will help you sell to the Chinese market.I have great confidence in your products.

4. Beijing Dialogue with Zuckerberg
Background tips:

The China Development Forum was established in 2000 by the Development Research Center of the State Council and hosted by the China Development Research Foundation. Its purpose is "dialogue with the world and seek common development". On March 2016, 3, at the group meeting of the Economic Summit of the China Development Forum, Jack Ma, chairman of the board of directors of Alibaba Group, and Mark Zuckerberg, founder and CEO of Facebook, one focused on technology, one devoted to culture , an engineer, a teacher, one is an American who taught himself Chinese, and the other is a Chinese who taught himself English. Regarding innovation, Ma Yun and Zuckerberg launched a dialogue of knowledge and wisdom.

Ten years ago, the Davos Forum made its first move
Qian Yingyi[18]: Today, we are very lucky to have two guests here for a dialogue, one from the United States and one from China.I think that wherever a forum of the highest level is held on Internet topics, the two guests that the host wants to invite most should be the two of them.Let's welcome Alibaba's Jack Ma and Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg!
Zuckerberg: I ​​am very glad to be here at the China Development Forum.I admire the rapid development of China's economy very much. I am also very excited to discuss innovation with Jack Ma today. Innovation is the focus of economic development.I am trying to learn Chinese, but my Chinese is very bad, so I want to ask Jack Ma to communicate with me in English, hope you understand.

Ma Yun: I think Xiao Zha's Chinese is quite easy to understand. Many Chinese people speak Mandarin with a heavy accent, but they can't understand it.My English also has an accent, because I'm self-taught and I haven't studied overseas, so there are many grammatical mistakes.I feel that learning the language of another country is itself a love of another culture. 10 years ago, Xiao Zha and I met for the first time in Davos.We were both invited to a forum that night to talk about top tech talent.I don't know anything about technology, but I was invited to go too.No one knew who Xiaozha and I were, and we chatted at the door for about 30 minutes.At that time, I didn't know what Facebook was, and he didn't know what Alibaba was, but dozens of other people were well-known top technology experts, and we couldn't get in the conversation, so we chatted for a while.I thought he was very interesting, and he hadn't learned Chinese at that time.I said, if one day you go to China, call me, maybe I can help.Four years ago, one day he suddenly called me and said, do you still remember the promise made a few years ago.I said of course I remember.Once I went to facebook and found that he had started to learn Chinese.I shared my opinion with his management team, and his team members were laughing.I asked one of them what you were laughing at, and he said you and Zuckerberg spoke alike.

At that time, I felt that many of Xiao Zha’s views were indeed similar to mine.You can compare, he never studied in China, but taught himself Chinese in the United States; I never studied in the West, but taught himself English in China.This shows that both of us have a special interest in Eastern and Western cultures.Alibaba is a company that is very Western in the eyes of Chinese people, but in the eyes of Westerners, we are very Eastern, and many people see the combination of Eastern and Western cultures in us.And I also see the combination of Eastern and Western cultures from Facebook, so I think Facebook is a very amazing company.East and West have been competing. Will the East win or the West?Personally, I believe that only those who can grasp the synergy between East and West will win.I saw in Xiao Zha a great element of trying to combine the two cultures.

Artificial Intelligence: Machines must be smarter than humans, but not smarter than humans

Moderator: Now let's listen to the views of these two famous Internet personalities on innovation.I started by asking Mark Zuckerberg a question: In your opinion, what exactly is innovation?

Zuckerberg: First of all, the time span of your thinking about the problem must be large enough. You must think about what kind of problems may arise in 5 to 10 years, and what solutions you will find to solve during this period.This is innovation.If you're looking for a solution to a current problem, you're probably not innovating.Therefore, for the company, it should pay attention to some long-term issues.This is the nature of innovation.

Two years ago, we celebrated Facebook's 10th anniversary with more than 10 billion users.At that time we were thinking, what problems in the world do we hope to solve in the next 5 years?Some problems can be solved in one to two years, such as product development.But to solve really big problems, we need 10 years, [-] years, maybe even longer.We believe there are three fundamental issues that need to be addressed:
First, extend the Internet to every corner of the world.Among the 70 billion people in the world, about 40 billion people do not have access to the Internet, so they cannot get the same education and employment opportunities as us, and cannot use the tools we are very accustomed to.I think this problem can be solved within 10 years.

Second, artificial intelligence. The match between AlphaGo[19] and world Go master Lee Sedol really shows the power of artificial intelligence.However, how does artificial intelligence understand the world, how does it understand human senses, such as vision and hearing, and how does it acquire language abilities?It's not that artificial intelligence can replace people, but within 10 years, research in this area may make great progress.

Third, we want to build a huge computing platform.This platform may be based on vision and virtual reality.Looking at the current situation, a new computing platform will appear about every five years.The first mainframe computers were the size of a room and were very expensive, then we had the personal computer, and now we have laptops and smartphones, almost everyone has one.In the next five years, there may be a computing platform with a more natural and immersive environment. I think this is a computer assisted by virtual reality-this may be the most important computing platform in the next 5 to 10 years.

We have to think about what kind of problems we will have in 5 to 10 years. This is the problem that innovation needs to solve.

(End of this chapter)