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Only the exceptionally negative would dream of shorting Alibaba, the Chinese e-commerce group, not least because most shares are locked up with friends and family, making it expensive to take a bearish view.
Alibaba has become the symbol of China’s ambitions to turn itself into a tech powerhouse and a source of innovation as powerful as the US.
Right behind Alibaba are a group of other internet groups, including Baidu, JD.com and Tencent, and investors such as Beijing-based Hillhouse, the Chinese arms of Sequoia Capital, (arguably the most international of Silicon Valley’s venture capital firms), and Tiger Global. Such companies are also critical to China’s hope of rebalancing its economy towards a more consumption-led service economy, away from its dependence on heavy industry and manufacturing export.
Walk into JD’s modest offices near the Olympic sports centre in the north of Beijing, and executives there are calculating just how many hundreds of thousands of jobs they will need to fill in coming years to deliver everything from detergent to designer clothes to Chinese citizens in the hinterland.
Combine DHL, FedEx and UPS and it is possible to get some idea of the scale of the demand for labour these companies can generate in future, offsetting (hopefully) the loss of jobs accompanying the closure of low-end, pollution-generating factories.
Tech entrepreneurs have already disrupted telecoms groups, retailers, transport companies and banks, among others. In future, they will play a major role in taking the mainland to the next level.
In spite of that bright future, it is tempting to say the big money has already been made in tech in China.
Media companies carry interviews with supporting characters who made fortunes in Alibaba, or explaining why they did not. It is hard to imagine any deal will come close to repeating the fortunes made by early investors in Alibaba, such as SoftBank, for a variety of reasons.
For one thing, these internet groups are themselves becoming investors whose deep pockets will increasingly be deployed in taking stakes in new young start-ups. Tencent plans to invest about $US7 billion ($8 billion) every year, according to one investor.
In doing so, the mobile internet groups are increasingly competing with companies such as Hillhouse.
SIZE MATTERS FOR START-UPS
Moreover, increasing numbers of the hot, young start-ups lack the scale of a Baidu or an Alibaba, precisely because of these companies’ early-mover advantages. So the next generation are more niche-apps kind of companies.
China does not have the sort of antitrust regimes that at least try to discourage monopolistic behaviour and promote competition. Today, mobile internet is democratising China – but will it always do so?
In addition, a number of the more-experienced investors worry about the growing risks in the space.
They think, for example, that some of the new internet financing platforms could blow up if providers fail to honour (implicit) guarantees, or that regulators could ban certain structures in the future.
Before the Alibaba listing, Chinese regulators were among the cheerleaders for questionable legal structures for companies going public. They may not always be so forgiving.
In addition, investing is a matter of having the right networks, such as university alumni connections, making it ever harder for outsiders. Still, the price rises between early financing rounds have already reached dizzying heights, thanks to this competition. One early investor in a young e-commerce company recently paid double what a competitor paid for a small stake a mere two months earlier, for example.
Offsetting these negatives is the fact many of these new companies are attracting hundreds of millions of users in just months. And they plan to take their models offshore, to markets less advanced than China’s, with its 650 million mobile internet users.
Their founders are a new breed. Alibaba’s Jack Ma’s generation had one foot in the old system. Most of his peers are members of the Communist party and have a symbiotic relationship with the party. The next generation is less mindful of the system. Many dropped out of school to pursue their dreams. Many may not make it, and it will be a challenge for investors to always pick the next Alibaba. But it is still worth trying. |
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我这十年 (2008-10-27) vega 
楼主:毛巴马主席
发表于 2014-10-2 12:16
