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RISE OF CHINA’ S E- COMMERCE 19

tour guiding. In 1988, he graduated from college and became an English teacher at Hangzhou Dianzi (Electronic) University. Some of his students later became joint founders of Alibaba. In 1992, Ma and his friends established the Hope Translation Agency and through this he met many local businesses that traded overseas. In early 1995, the Hangzhou Municipal Government needed someone to send to the United States for liaison purposes and they called upon Ma. During his trip to Amer- ica, Ma learned about the internet. With the help of his American friends, he built a promotional webpage for the Hope Translation Agency and left an email address on the website. A few hours later, he received five emails. It was at that moment that he decided he had to set up an internet business in China. The same year, he resigned from his prestigious role at the university – considered a particularly bold move – to become an internet entrepreneur. Ma’s initial business was China Yellow Pages, which made English home- pages for business websites. However, things didn’t go entirely smoothly and, in 1997, he accepted an invitation from the Ministry of Foreign Trade and Economic Cooperation to join the China International E-commerce Centre. Within a little over a year, Ma and his team built a series of websites such as the Online Chinese Commodity Trade Market, the Online China Technology Export Fair and China Merchants. However, working for the government was too restrictive to satisfy Ma’s ambitions. B2B: the establishment of Alibaba In January 1999, Ma and his team returned to Hangzhou and raised RMB500,000 (US$60,389 4 ) to establish a B2B e-commerce company aimed at serving small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs): Alibaba. Its mis- sion was to help China’s small exporters, manufacturers and entrepreneurs reach global buyers. In March of the same year, Alibaba’s website was launched. By May, the registered members of Alibaba exceeded 20,000. In October, Goldman Sachs invested US$5 million. 5 In January 2000, Softbank invested US$20 million. 6 Ma started to expand globally. Aside from Chinese and English websites, Al- ibaba also launched Korean and Japanese versions. In March 2000, however, the internet bubble began to burst. Ma adjusted his strategy just in time: he would aim to succeed in China first, before going global.