‘Easy to start but tough to stop’: Alibaba’s Jack Ma warns against trade wars
Tech giant’s co-founder promotes globalisation, saying China and the United States need to work together to confront the challenges of the next 30 years
Trade wars are easy to start but difficult to stop and should not be wielded as a weapon between countries, Jack Ma, co-founder of Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba, told an international forum in Switzerland on Tuesday.
“When trade stops, sometimes the war starts. So trade is the way to stop wars. Trade is the way to build up trust. Trade is not the weapon to fight against each other,” Ma said in the opening panel discussion at the World Trade Organisation Public Forum in Geneva.
Alibaba owns the South China Morning Post.
Ma was one of five people on the panel – including former US assistant trade representative for the service sector Christine Bliss – examining the ways technology would reshape trade by 2030.
Their assessments came as the United States and China are engaged in an escalating trade war that appears to be taking a bite out of the Chinese economy.
China’s latest official purchasing managers’ index pointed to weakening in the manufacturing sector in September. While the index for the country’s service sector held up for the month, the factory index fell to 50.8, just above the 50 mark that divides expansion from contraction, with declines in new export orders and output, according to China’s National Bureau of Statistics. It was the index’s second-lowest level in a year.
