ALBAWABA – Following years of governmental efforts to punish the Chinese and one of the world’s biggest e-commerce platforms, Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. is now looking towards the Middle East to reclaim its position in spearheading the republic’s tech industry, as reported by Bloomberg, with UAE and Saudi Arabia as initial goals.
On a panel during the World Government Summit in Dubai, Michael Evans, president of Alibaba, spoke about the giant platform’s plans to partnership, describing it as an ‘unusual thing for a Chinese company,’ adding that the company has concluded doing “something very interesting in Saudi [Arabia],” and are going to continue doing local market partnerships in UAE next.
Alibaba, which was formerly the most valued firm in China, has lagged well behind Tencent Holdings Ltd., the leader in gaming and social media, as well as lost its ranking as the most valuable e-commerce operator in China to PDD, an eight-year-old startup that has greatly outpaced Alibaba's development thanks to the popular shopping app Temu.
Chinese businessman and founder of Alibaba group Jack Ma in congress at VIVA Technology, Paris, France 2019 (Shutterstock)
Jack Ma, billionaire and founder of Alibaba, has stepped out of silence at the end of 2023 after legal battles with the Chinese government, speaking to the company’s 220 thousand employees in an internal note, according to Bloomberg, urging them to redirect the company’s strategy to take over rival PDD and take back its once powerful position.
In recent years, Gulf nations have been strengthening their connections with China, Bloomberg notes, as the oil-rich region looks to diversify its financial sector away from petroleum and increase its global influence with initiatives like Saudi Arabia 2030, with some nations, including the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, receiving invitations to join BRICs last year as part of an expansion campaign mostly lead by China.
