Alibaba’s Joe Tsai: Chinese firms face harsh realities amid rising geopolitical tensions
Current geopolitical environment is the most unfriendly ever, Alibaba co-founder and chairman says
Chinese companies are facing the most challenging geopolitical environment in decades, according to Joe Tsai, a co-founder and chairman of Alibaba Group Holding.
“Right now, this is, I could say definitively, the most unfriendly geopolitical environment that we’ve been in,” Tsai said in a fireside chat at the Asian Financial Forum in Hong Kong on Tuesday. “As a Chinese company, if we want to do business in the US, we’re gonna get hit by whatever it may be, [including] tariffs.”
This is because Americans believe Chinese exporters and manufacturers are too strong and they are selling too many things, he added.
Alibaba, which operates Taobao, China’s largest e-commerce platform, has been expanding overseas amid a slowing Chinese economy despite geopolitical tensions. Alibaba owns the South China Morning Post.
US president-elect Donald Trump, who returns to the White House next week, has said he would impose 60 per cent tariffs on Chinese exports. Trump initiated a trade war with China in his first term as president, imposing levies on more than US$300 billion worth of Chinese goods.
In 2022, the US government reviewed Alibaba’s cloud business to assess whether it posed a risk to national security. It is also one of several Chinese tech companies affected by US export controls on advanced semiconductors.