Alibaba’s Jack Ma says he is ‘worried’ Europe will stifle innovation with too much tech regulation
- Europe lags behind in terms of technology innovation and has not produced as many big tech firms
- Last year, the continent put in place the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), a set of data protection rules for all companies that have operations in the region
Jack Ma, Alibaba Group executive chairman and co-founder, on Thursday urged Europe to stop worrying about technology, as tighter regulation could hamper its ability to innovate.
He pointed to China as an example of how a lack of regulation around the internet in the early days allowed China’s mobile internet to flourish and for Alibaba to thrive. Alibaba is the parent company of the South China Morning Post.
“[Back then] most of the government officials didn’t know how to make rules and laws for the internet, because nobody realised what the internet looked like,” Ma said at the VivaTech conference in Paris. “That gave us the chance to grow fast.”
He added that in China, entrepreneurs “start to solve problems” first before thinking about regulation, but suggested that Europe’s tendency to regulate once it becomes worried about a certain issue could be stifling innovation.
Compared to the US, whose Silicon Valley has produced the likes of Facebook and Google, as well as China with its technology powerhouses like Alibaba, Tencent and Baidu, Europe lags behind in terms of technology innovation and has not produced as many big tech firms.
“Europe … everything you do follows rules and laws. Everything you think about, when you start to worry, you make rules and laws,” he said. “I worry about Europe, and I worry about the worries of Europe.”