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US-China trade war
AsiaSoutheast Asia

US will ‘suffer more’ in trade war with China: Alibaba’s Jack Ma

Cold-war style offensive by America is an ill-advised miscalculation that will cause pain ‘all over the world’, warn top executives of Chinese conglomerate

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Alibaba’s Jack Ma appears via video link at the South China Morning Post’s China Conference in Kuala Lumpur on October 10. Photo: KY Cheng
Bhavan Jaipragas
American efforts to launch a cold war of sorts against Beijing to neutralise the rise of Asia’s biggest economy are “ill advised”, Alibaba Group’s top executives said on Wednesday.
The company’s co-founder Jack Ma told the South China Morning Post ’s China Conference in Kuala Lumpur he believed the United States would “suffer more” from the dispute – but added he remained optimistic because “as entrepreneurs if you are not optimistic [you shouldn’t be] entrepreneurs”.

Speaking via video link to the audience of business leaders and diplomats, Ma said he did not see the logic behind the US tariff offensive to reverse its large trade deficit with China.

The US economy had in fact benefited from its trade relationship with the China, Ma said, pointing out the Western superpower’s gross domestic product had grown steadily in part because of the outsourcing of jobs to China.

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Highlights from the China Conference:

Ma’s second in command, Joe Tsai, the Chinese conglomerate’s executive vice-chairman, had harsher words for Washington as he declared the trade war had morphed into a “cold war or geopolitical war started by the United States”.

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