My Take | China's Alibaba is what Western capitalists dream of

At Manhattan's famed Waldorf Astoria Hotel this week, hundreds of wealthy and powerful investors and fund managers queued to listen to Jack Ma's pitch for the IPO of Alibaba, the mainland e-commerce giant.

Many had to wait up to half an hour for the lifts and put up with elaborate security scans and searches, if they were lucky enough to be allowed in. How is that for the rise of China or rather the rise of China as a consumer society? But why the mystique of Alibaba, which is just kind of like Amazon, only bigger?

Reading the IPO prospectus, everything about it is in the tens and hundreds of millions, even the billions. The hyped-up numbers partly explain it. But at a historical-cultural level, Alibaba embodies the Western capitalist's age-old wet dream. For more than two centuries, the West has recognised China's market potential. That recognition has coloured their relationships ever since. Today, an internet-driven company is selling itself as the one mainland company that exemplifies China's limitless consumerism.

A few years ago, when Alibaba was still a minor player, a book called One Billion Customers: Lessons from the Front Lines of Doing Business in China made the best-selling list for weeks.

Today, Alibaba almost approaches that kind of number. It corners 80 per cent of China's e-commerce market. It has 231 million active users making 11 billion orders a year. In a country that has 618 million internet users, half of them shop online. Small mainland companies sell their wares by sharing various Alibaba-owned platforms with Western giants like Apple and Nike.

More than two centuries ago, Lord Macartney set sail to the court of Emperor Qianlong for the express purpose of opening up the China market. On his mission was a little boy called George Staunton, son of the lord's secretary. He learned Chinese during the trip and would grow up to become arguably the 19th century's most influential sinologist avant la lettre. His urging helped convince a deeply divided British parliament, leery of launching a war for the drug trade in the name of the crown, into sanctioning the opium war.