All right, w elcome everybody to Hangzhou. I'm very happy to have all of you coming to our Xixi campus. You know, when we were thinking about holding this event, our first ever Investor Day, one of the big issues was that we wanna make sure those investors, who are, you know, have a lot of capital invested with us, also understand our products, our services. That's a big problem, because, you know, a lot of you who are based in the U.S., in other countries, who haven't lived day to day in China. Not being able to access our products is actually a big issue for an understanding of our business.
I hope that the main takeaway from today is that you can, you know, with our demonstration of how we're delivering value to the consumers, how we are helping sellers to work on our platform, we can give you a sense that real sort of firsthand experience of the of our business. I'd like to just welcome everybody and I'd like to ask Jack to come up to stage to kick off.
Good morning, m orning everyone. Welcome to this city, and welcome to our campus. Every time when I speak to the investors, a lot of people getting nervous in the company. I spend a very little time communicating with investors 'cause I remember year 1999, Joe and I went to Silicon Valley. We talked to over 30 venture capitalists. We did not get even $1 back. I thought it's all my fault because all the investors look at me say, "This is a crazy guy. What he's talking about?" 'Cause they don't believe. The way I talk is so different from the other guys. I remember year 2003, I went to the L.A. and San Francisco with Joe again. At that time, we started launching the Taobao.
We said we're gonna compete with eBay. I remember in a very important investor office, after I talk for like 20 minutes, this guy walked away and he came back, say, "eBay will win. You have no chance." I know I'm not very good communicator with the investors, but I'm pretty good at communicate with the entrepreneurs, but in my heart. 'Cause when I talk, I know what they think, I know what they want, and I know how we can working together. After so many years, my team never disappointed me, and my team never think I'm crazy. Joe, as most of the time, he works like my interpreter. He tried to explain to the investor, "This is not what Jack mean.
This is what Jack mean that. I said, 10 years ago, said, "Jack, Joe, you in charge of the investors, let me do all the business stuff." That was our partnership. I got a little bit sort of confusing in the past years when, especially when we IPO-ed. The story on the market people talk about always put us with Amazon, with eBay, with JD. I said, "This is not us." How can we explain ourselves better in a way that to communicate? The way we explain, the more we try to explain, the more we look like we're cutting our legs and our hands to meet the other people's standard. It never work. Finally, I think I should come out and talk myself.
It's just like, year 2000, the Harvard Business School came to us, say, "Jack, we want to write a case study for Alibaba." They spent seven days in the company. At that time, it's not a company, it's just like my, it's a little bit big hall with like 200 people. After seven days, they write a case study A, and they say, "Jack, this is your case study." I read it and I said, "No, this is not us." They say, "This is you. You do not realize that." I said, "No, this is not us." After like two hours debating, and I start to sort of think, "Hmm, maybe this is us." I know this is not us. They say, "Sign it." I sign it as a case study A, go out.
For five years we have this case study in Peking University, Tsinghua University, and biz schools. I was always invited, sitting at the corner, and they always put to us with another competitor in China, in Singapore, and America, and have a competition, who will win in three years? Every year, we will lose, the other guy will win. Every year, they all die, we still survive. We know this is not us, but we finally know that most people, in their mind, they already had a basket they put to you inside. You belong to this category. We believe we do not belong to that category. About this city. Year 2003, we started competing with eBay. Nobody believed we have the chance. eBay thought you have no chance.
Year 2005, Meg Whitman met me because we almost had a deal. She said, "I went to your city because to spend a whole weekend, with my team. It's too late." She said, "I want to know you and know your city and know your team." Later, I think it's too late for her to come to our company. This city, 1972, was the city Mao Zedong and Nixon agreed to China and American relationship. This is the city. American President Nixon and his wife visited to this city. That day, I was somewhere like 10, 15 minutes away from Nixon. Everybody said, "America's president is coming to this city." Because of that, this city was the earliest city that opened to the world. Because of that, we had a Hangzhou Hotel, today called Hangzhou Shangri-La Hotel.
We have many, many American tourists visit this city since 1970s. I don't know why, my parents didn't know anything about ABC, I started to fall in love with the language. For nine years, every morning, I went there to learn my English by free touring for the American tourists. Today, my English is not good, but I can make myself understood. My English is not good as those people who've been well-trained in the States or in the U.K. I believe I can understand those American culture, Western culture, much better than those Chinese, overseas Chinese students being studied in America or in the U.K. for 20 years. Because when I studied my English, I was 9, 11- 12 years old. For nine years, I start to learn things.
I found everything the tourists, the American visitors or international visitors told me are so different from the things that my parents told me, from the things my teachers told me. My training was everything I learned, I have to think about for secondhand. Think about what is it right? Is it wrong? I am 100% made in Hangzhou, and this company would also like this, is 100% made in Hangzhou. I was always curious of one thing. Nixon came to China. What about Mao Zedong? One day, he went to America. At that time, 1972, if Mao Zedong went to America, I don't know what's going to happen. Deng Xiaoping went to America. He came back to China; he thinks that he should change China in a very better reform.
I got opportunity, wonderful opportunity. 1985, I went to Australia for a summer vacation because my pen friends invited me. There, I learned the world is so different. We thought China was the richest country in the world. We're supposed to go there, liberate the other nations. Finally, I realized it's totally wrong. In 1994, later that year, I went to the United States. I saw the big difference, and there, I discovered the internet. Since then, I went to USA almost every year. I went to Silicon Valley, Seattle, New York, tried to understand the internet, tried to understand the way American people do. I tried to understand the way the American business do. I learned the transparency. I learned the Davos, from the Davos social responsibility. I learned what value means.
We are 100% made in China, but this company, our team, even at the, when the team was, had very little money, 18 founders, they encouraged me to go all around the world, learn great ideas, came back, discuss with them. I remember in my apartment. This company is a living documentary. Since 1999, February 24th, my apartment, we record most of, if it is not a 100%, 90% of the meetings, decisions, 90% of the all the big events, we record by videos. We have the world largest video clip as a company. We keep all the things. We believe someday, maybe 20 years later, maybe 50 years later or 80 years later, people is gonna study this company.
What things we did right, what things we did wrong, why we do these decisions? 'Cause we said, "One day, Alibaba will be a case study for the world to learn how a Chinese company become a global company." 1999, February 24th, in my apartment, I told my team, the 18 founders, "Our competitors, not in China. Our competitors are in the States, in the Silicon Valley. Our competitors are in Israel, in those nations. We should never think about the competitors in China because internet is so new, we're competing with the smartest people in the world. We are a Chinese company. Well, we're born in China, but we're not Chinese company. We have to create a company for the future." Even at that time, in my apartment, we had the vision that we want to be a global company.
We want to be the top 10 websites of the world. That time, we are ranking 100 and some millions at the world, at the bank. We believe we will be there. We hope we will be there. I want to say one thing. Last month with the States, I've told some important guys say, "We, Chinese people, understand American better than American people understand the Chinese." If you go on the street in China, in Beijing, Shanghai, or any big cities, you pick up 100 young people, you will find 80 of them can speak at least 100 English words. Go to New York, go to Washington, go to any big cities in America, pick up 100 American people and ask how many of them can speak 10 Chinese words.
Go to China internet companies, asking them, most of the top 100 internet companies in the America, we understand their business model. We understand their CEO. We understand their history. Asking America internet companies, investors, how many of them understand the Chinese business internet? They think, "Copycat. This is the model. Do you have this? Do you have that?" No. I got a little bit, interesting, you know, frustrated or interesting thing is that if a Chinese company go listed in the America, they will always ask you two things. First, "Can you explain your company business model within one sentence?" We cannot. "Do you have such kind of model in the America?" No, we don't have. The third, we don't even have our service in the America.
People say, "Jack, are you frustrated and upset about the stock price?" Yes and no. I think I can understand because we are a company from China. We are doing something that nobody's done before in history, and very, very, very few people has used our service in America and outside China. It's understandable. Good things always takes time. We should have patience. Nothing could be succeed in a short time. By talking about that, I wanna explain what is Alibaba. What is Alibaba vision? 2003, we started launch Taobao, and we said we will win. We don't know. We never know that eBay will leave China so soon because, you know, they just are two or three years competition left. We said, if anybody come to China to compete, if they lose, they can win.
If we lose, we have nowhere to go. We have to be there. We from that day to now, we are, last year, our sales is already bigger than, the GMV already bigger than the Walmart. That was seven years ago. I talked to the Walmart, one of the senior guy, their executive senior guy in Hangzhou. We're sitting there, we're chatting, I say, "In 10 years, we will bigger than Walmart." He say, "Young man, you have a very good vision." He never thought we will do it, I said, "We will make it happen." After we go across the Walmart, what's your next goal, people say. "Jack, what is your future?" People love to ask one question, What Alibaba will look like in 20 years?
I said to team, "Now we are bigger than Walmart. The next goal is we should bigger than some nations." By end of this year, we will be the top 20 nation, GDP-wise. By God, we are bigger than Sweden, right? We hope, actually, in 2020, that is Alibaba 20-year anniversary, we will be bigger than the, we will be like a top 16 nation of the world, and we will go across $1 trillion GMV, and by, we will be top three province. By the way, last year, our GMV, as to the GDP-wise, we are the number six province of China, and China have the new province. In three, four years, we're gonna be the top three province.
Maybe if we're lucky enough, we might be the top one province, bigger than Guangdong in four years. As life, I want to say that in 20 years, Alibaba tries to be, and our vision is to be the fifth-largest economy of the world. Number fifth the world largest economy of the world. Number one, maybe USA. Number two, China. Number three, Europe. Number four is Japan. Number five should be Alibaba. As the economy, GDP is not what is most important. We think as an economy, you have to have some other standard. The other standard we set is the 2 billion population. We want to serve 2 billion population. We want to create 100 million jobs for the world, and we want to support and help 10 million profitable businesses on our economy.
This is what we are vision about. We always said that the company should be driven by mission and vision. By the way, a lot of people talking about a mission and a vision, but very few companies really believe it or really think it works. For this company, I think I cannot finish my talk in half an hour by telling you how we stick to the mission and vision, but I hope these things you are here, spend the time talking to our people, our managers, and every people, and ask about our mission and vision of value. How can these things has already come into the blood of their actions? This is what we wanna do. In 20 years, we wanna be the fifth largest economy of the world.
In four years, we will be the top three provinces of China, we will support two billion population. We will create 100 million jobs. We will support 10 million profitable business on our economy. This is everything we are doing about. The other thing is that how can we reach that vision? How can we make this thing happening? Our strategy is, like, focus on three things. Globalization and go to the rural areas, and the third is only cloud computing, data, big data and cloud computing. Globalization, our understanding is that global buy and global sell. How we can help small business, enable small business, enable every individual that they can sell and buy globally. The fifth largest economy, our vision is that with that economy, with that platform, we can enable every individual.
If you have a mobile phone, you can buy and sell everywhere. If you have a car, you can be an Uber or Didi Kuaidi anytime. If you have a land and you plant a potato, normally you can only sell to the neighbors. Today, you can sell to all of the world you want. If you have a ceiling, you can sell your solar energy to anywhere in the world. This is our vision about. People think, "Ha, this sounds crazy." I've been told sounds like crazy for 17 years. 17 years ago when we say we'll be the top 10 sites of the world. 17 years ago we say we will be the largest e-commerce of the world. No one will believe you. People believe it sounds crazy. Today, we have more than 40,000 excellent young people.
We have the data, we have the technology, we have the cash, we have the support from a more than 500 m illion people. We think it makes sense. It is much possible than 17 years ago. By the way, a lot of people say, "Wow, what's your GMV? What's that, like, what is the GDP?" We have the world's largest retailer business, We are not retail business. We are a data business. This I'm gonna explain later, I think Daniel's gonna explain later. Globalization to us means global buy and global sell. You know that, as I said, we want to serve 2 billion population, 2 billion consumers. China, we have to 1.4 billion population. If you think about it, how many people in China is gonna using our services?
As the social statistic, 30% of the people will never use the service. Even if we excuse all the population who can using online or mobile to shop in our site, we probably can gather 700 million people to 800 million people in China using our platform to buy and sell. We need another at least 1.2 billion population outside China to do it. Where is that? It's One Belt, One Road. Europe, Latin America, in the future, maybe Africa. This is what we believe that is the future. The globalization, I think the past 20 years is a wonderful success. Last 20 years globalization is more like Americanization or big companization. It's supporting 20% of the big companies going global. For the developing nations, small business does not have a chance.
For us, our business, we want to help small business to go global, globalization. We want to support 80% of the, of the small business, of the consumers. They have never got the chance to do globalization. We said we wanna build up an EWTP. It's not an EWTO. WTO is organization. It's about government is sitting there negotiation. If the government, all the government put in the same room negotiation, there is nothing is gonna happen. It's all about debating corner. This is why we see the Doha Round go for such a long time. I'm getting 50 years old. They are still negotiation. If Taobao today, the Taobao Alibaba, we cover more than 30 province. Every province join the Alibaba platform. We never put all the 30 governors in the same room negotiation. We just do by business way using the market economy.
We think EWTP has got Electronic World Trade Platform. This platform is gonna enable small business, consumers to buy and sell anywhere. We will start from building of a e-road. In the past, there is called a Silk Road. Now, we are gonna build a e-road. The e-road that can enable all the small guys can sell and buy globally. This thing today sounds a concept, but we are working very aggressively. Tonight, I'm going to Russia. I was in Europe, in America, in Kazakhstan. Last month, for one month, 26 days, I was on the road. Why was that? I'm not interested in shaking hands with the president. I'm interested in doing something that's going to happen five years later. 'Cause Daniel and, you know, Lucy, they're great team. They're handling about the business today.
What I as a chair should do is doing something what we believe, doing something that our management can put in a better way or much better execution five years later. I'm shaking hands with all the government, talking to all the business partners and organizations to try to build up the EWTP. We are serious about what we promised, what we wanna do. We believe that EWTP e-road, remember today, 10 years later, you will love it. It's not about we talk about a concept and don't think that. Somebody's doing something for today, and I with my team have to do something for five, 10 years later. The other is the rural area, the Nongcun Taobao, the village Taobao.
We think China have about over 700 million people live in the rural areas. We were discussing years ago, well, where can we get more population? Some people say we should go to Indonesia. We should go to Malaysia. We should go to India. India is a great market. Malaysia is a good, great market. Indonesia is a great market. I think China rural areas is even better market. We got 700 million people living in the rural areas. If we cannot convince those people, if we cannot help those people, how can you help the people in India? How can you help the people in Indonesia? They are different culture, different system, so far away. We should definitely help the people in this nation first. Today, because the mobile technology. Years ago, for the farmers, impossible to do business, buy and sell online because PC.
Very few people know how to use the PC. Today, because of mobile phone, most of the farmers have a mobile phone. By the mobile phones, the chance of modernization the rural areas is much bigger. I think today, since you are in Hangzhou, go to some village nearby and, and talking to the farmers how they benefit from the Alibaba Taobao villages. The third, which is very important to us, is AliCloud. One thing I would love to tell you about is that seven years ago, or it should be eight years ago, our CTO, today he's the chair of our technology, Dr. Wang Jian, came to me. He interviewed to join the company. He asked me a question, "Jack, what do you think about Alibaba business growing like this in 10 years?
What's the view?" I say, "We're gonna have a lot of page views, a lot of click rates, a lot of takeover, a lot of transactions. This is good." "Have you thought about how much money you're gonna spend on the server and the computing? How much money you got about the Oracle serve the database. How much money are you gonna spend?" I say, "Well, that's a small money." He said, "Let's calculate." After we sit down, calculate, I say, "Oh, my God. Our company is gonna bankrupt." We will spend all the money buying the servers. We'll spend all the money buying license for the Oracle system. We're gonna spend all the money to keep the data's. This company will never work. We say, "Let's sit down and discuss what is our future business.
Let's sit down, think about how we can solve this problem." A group of people with me and our CEO, we've been discussing for several days. We decide we should move to the thing called cloud. This was seven years ago. It was such a painful decision because we have no idea what the cloud will look like. Dr. Wang Jian and I said, "We believe that if we do not solve the problem, even if we succeed, we will never survive." We had to solve the problem. I called this project called Moon Landing, Apollo Project. We had to do that. After three months later, Dr. Wang came to say, "Jack, we should not call the Moon Landing. We should call Moon Forwarding." I said, "What's the difference with Moon Landing, Moon Forward?" "Moon landing is that you will be back.
Moon Forwarding, you will never be back." We say, "Okay, let's do it." You know, technology sometimes is look like, it sounds like, it's like a religion for many engineers. As the CEO, founder of this company, I had no any idea about the engineering and technology. It was a painful four years. We just hired most of the excellent database guys, you know, traditional IT database guys, and IT guys joined the company. They're the top one. Because as the CEO, I had no knowledge about technology, we tried to hire the best engineer in technology. They came here, and then suddenly we are going to using a cloud technology to replace that. It's like a religion fighting.
We had lots of fighting of day and night, and especially the fight in my office, I had no idea what they were fighting about. To me, the most painful thing is those great engineers, they leave the company. Among the top data guys, database guys, experts of the company, seven of them left the company. They said, "This is a wrong way. If we go in that way, the company is gonna be killed. This technology, nobody has tried before. If we start this, the company has no future." This is good about a CEO has no idea, as a founder has no idea about what the technology is about. My belief is that if this thing work, we will survive. If this thing does not work, we will die. If this thing work, we can support millions of small business.
In the future, they will rely their business on the technology. This technology can support them. They can save their company. We should do it. 'Cause if you don't do it, no matter how big Taobao, Tmall, it's going to die. Let's do it. Some of the videos in the future will see. People even, first time, Alibaba always hammer on the table, but I never see people throw the chair, say, "I don't like this idea." I was shocked because I had no idea about what they're debating about.
After seven years, this company goes through that channel, and we want to say today our technology about cloud computing, our data is. Also, I want to tell you, five years, it was about six years ago in a very serious senior management meeting, we decide this company from this day will change our model. We say we would move our model from retailer, GMV, to a data company. We called the correct Chinese sentence is be the 21st century the first data sharing platform of the world. This was six years ago. People keep asking me, "How are you making money by data? Because security issues and privacy issues." We said, "We don't know." We worry about in next to 5, 10 years, people came up as challenge us, "Hey, how you make money? You don't make money.
Why you change your company become a data? In order to prevent that thing happen, we write a sentence for that memo. We don't know how to make money off the data today, but we know nobody can live without data in the future. In order to making sure this company moving the direction to be a data company. This was not the concept today. This was something we made decision six years ago that the company is a data company. We said the difference between Walmart and us, Walmart sell things, and they put the data in the other nation, the standard data in order to sell better. We said six years ago, we sell things because we want to collect the data. We want to have the data from consumers. We want the data from the business.
We want the data from the processing procedures. All the data we collect. We do Ant Financial because we want the data to build up the credit system of China. We do logistics because we want the data. All the things we're doing is that we want the data. Making Alibaba has, is the data, and with the capability of computing we have, we are going to say we are probably one of the luckiest company in the world. People keep on asking what is GMV? What is GMV? Well, GMV is not what we want. Six years ago, Well, by the way, I told you one thing. I had a problem with my venture capitalist investors in 15, 10 years ago.
They keeping asking me, year 2001, 2002, say, "What is the revenue?" I said, "We don't have revenue." "Then what is the page view?" I said, "We don't have page view." "Then what is the click-through rate?" Because at that time, page view was the business model. Later, click-through rate is the business model. I say, if we compare page views, then we are like a Sina, Sohu, a NetEase. We are like a Yahoo! because we are not a portal. How come? The VC said, "I want either revenue or page view." I said, "No." They say, they advertise, "What is the click rate?" I said, "We don't have a click rate." Finally, year 2005, all right, we give you something called GMV. We learn from the eBay.
GMV is never be the standard of e-commerce. If the investors, if they, by that time, you know, they need it, we give them, and later become a standard. Actually, in our heart, we know this is not exactly the only index. It is the index. It is not the index. You have, of course, as a nation, GDP is very important. The most important is the infrastructure of commerce. What is the Alibaba infrastructure of commerce? What is the infrastructure of the fifth economy of the world? The e-commerce platform, the internet financing infrastructure, the logistics infrastructures, the cloud and data computing infrastructure, and the cross-border infrastructure. These are the key infrastructures that if you want to build up economy, a business economy, you have to have these 5 infrastructures, e-commerce, logistics, financing, data computing, and cross-border platform can enable sell and buy globally.
Today, you know, many of the province government came to us. They are very interested in building up the new infrastructure system for their government, their province business community. This called new, five new infrastructures for the future business. This is how we do it. AliCloud, you know, and the database, the datas we have, the capabilities we have, and the alliance and the ecosystem we have, we are working on that. Right? The other thing is people say, "Jack, we cannot understand your business model. How can you know? Why you buy this, buy that, and you are almost everywhere." Well, honestly, it is, I understand a lot of people cannot understand us. Just like in the past 15 years, very, very few people understands.
I've been debating with my venture capital investors for five years. Almost every board meeting, we debate. They want us put in this category, and we say, "No, we are building that." They say, "Okay, that is fine, but we want to be here." We've been debating that for years. My philosophy is that every business decision we do, we have to think about for 10 years. We serious take Alibaba should last for 102 years. 102 years is the strongest belief of this company. I notice one thing. The difference between the Silicon Valley and us is that there's some company here in China. Silicon Valley, a lot of company I found, they built to sell, right? They build up and sell to somebody.
For us, we want to build to last. 102 years is a company, we were born in 1999. Last century, we had one year. This century, we want 100 years. Next century, one year. It's 102 is across three centuries. This is what we believe. This is what we do. In order to realize that dream. Every decision we do, we have to have a 10-year plan. I hate it. I hate some people came to me say, "Hey, we do this. Next month we'll be very successful, or next year we'll be very successful." Never work. I want to tell you one thing. The day when I realized Yahoo! was a problem, that was when we had a deal. I was sitting on the board.
I found nobody make decisions, I know the company has no direction. The other problem is that I went to office, they invited, a engineer came to us talking about technology. You know what happened? The engineer spoke to us to me and my team for half an hour. 28 minutes, he's talking about how he's going to make money by this product. I think something wrong. If the engineer is telling us how exact technology's gonna change a lot of people, this product is changing people's life, that's something interesting. An engineer is telling you how it's going to make him money. Something wrong with it. Everything we have to do is long-term. For today, people feel happy about Taobao, Tmall, Alipay. This is not the business we do today.
In our own company, inside, we have a rule. Many years ago we said we believe most of the internet companies can only be wonderful in the market for three years. Three years later, the other, very few companies can last, be prosperous for three years. We know we may not be that lucky company last for like a Google, like a Amazon or like a Apple for so many years. We said we should make every company of our Alibaba Group good for three years. Alibaba wonderful for three years, and then Tmall, Taobao for three years, and then the Alipay for three years. Alibaba go and B2B should fix. Tmall should be fixed. Alipay for six year, three years. After Alipay, AliCloud should go three years.
After AliCloud for three years, and then 10 years for three years. And then three years later, this B2B come back. This Tmall come back. This is the circle we designed. Internally, we said next year, right, so this should be the Ant Financing. And then three years later, year 2019, the AliCloud should come up because AliCloud was very diseased 2009. 10 years later, we start to harvest. Ali Cainiao should harvest on year 2023 because Ali Cainiao was found 2013. Every business we do, we have a 10-year plan for that, and we never change that concept. The product may be different, but any big strategic things, the decision we made is for 10 years.
Also, I think if you check the record of Alibaba, we had one thing that I said, if we had an idea, 90% of the people in my office, they say, "This is a great idea." Normally, I will throw into the rubbish. Because if we think it's a great idea, our competitors always also think like this. Everybody think like this. This not be a good idea. We should think about something the people dare not to do, will not do, and must be done. This is how we make decision. They, because of that philosophy, for so many years, the way we do, very few people love it and agree with it, and which we believe with. 'Cause nobody believed how about the C2C model, B2C model, marketplace model would work. Nobody believed the small business in China would work.
Nobody believed the consumer's e-commerce would work. We believe it, we never give it up. We improve every day. That come today. Nobody believed, even until Ali Cloud will survive. You know, seven years ago for such a big debate. Nobody believed Alipay. I remember one of our key investors, he talked to me year 2006 and 2007. He said, "Jack, Alipay, you can do whatever you want. This is not PayPal. This thing will never make money. Sell to anybody who want to pay that. You know, don't do it because this is a money-losing business." We believed it. We know this is not making money that year, in the future, because of the datas, in the future if you really create a value for the people, it will make money. We prove things by time.
We prove things by listening to the our users. If the users love it, we love it. Okay. I think that's all about what I want to say, but I also want to say that we can never, we do not want to create a concept to please the investors. We will never make concept to please the academics or the economists or the big writers how wonderful concept it is. We want people with who are capable with ideas. We want our Alibaba leadership has the belief. We do not want, you know, make this concept, this great idea. Of course, our idea sounds crazy, but we believe it. We make things happening.
The fifth largest economy, it sounds crazy today, but to me, it sounds much easier than 50 years ago. Also, I would like to pick, you know, Maggie and Joe wants to me talk about, explain to you what is a Double H. The happiness and health. They say, "Jack, now we understand you want to make the ecosystem here, right? You're buying the data's and everything. Why you are on the movie industry? Why are you in the sports? You know, sounds like you are everywhere." We are not everywhere. We are in the where a lot of people don't understand why we are there. I keep on asking our people and myself one thing. Last century, in China or, you know, in the world, if a company wanted to be big, you have to catch one or two big opportunities.
You may catch one opportunity, losing another opportunity. How can a company last long, and how can a company be a great company? This something five in the past five years, I've been keeping asking. That's why I went to a lot of meetings, like Davos, like, what you know, all the forums. Listen, understand. I think five years later, I came back, talked to one team, and which I openly, internally talk about. In the 21st century, if you want your company that is going to last long and meaningful and great, you have to solve social problem. Solve the problem. The bigger problem you solve, the more value you can create, the better you will be. This is how Alibaba did. 15 years ago, we want help small business doing things easier.
We want to solve using internet to enable small business. We are the enabler. We are not buy and sell, destroy the others. We want to enable the others. Based on that, we ask what's the problem of China? For next 10 years, I'm very confident about Alibaba business, Taobao business, Tmall business, Alipay business, cloud business, and cross-border trade. For that business, I'm comfortable. We are comfortable that it's gonna keep on growing because this thing is an ecosystem. This thing is a platform. This thing, nobody in this world can copy another one because happened to be in China. When we do it, nobody realize that. When we realize that, when people realize that, we already big, that big. We said, "We are okay about this thing." What about 10 years later?
We asking, 10 years later, what's the problem of China? The health problem. Because of the pollution, because of the air, water, food, health is gonna big problem. The other thing is Chinese people, like the world today, people get rich, people get unhappy. How can we make people happy about it? Sports. We don't have sports in China. Guys, think about it, 1.4 billion people, we cannot have a soccer team join the top 50 in the world. We do not have a basketball team even be the champion of, you know I thought China national team cannot soccer team cannot compete with Maldives. Can you imagine that? We, our basketball team is, cannot be, even be the champion of Asia.
Think about what happened because China government controlling sports in the past, 60 years. They thinks like a most people think sports is like a gold, Olympic gold medal competition. It's not about people. It's not about health. It's not about team sports. It's not a competition. It's not fun. It's not entertaining business. The government realize that. That's why it's the 1.4 billion people, the second largest economy, we do not have sports in this nation. How can we make the sports? 'Cause we hire so many young people in this company, right? 90% of the young people in this company are younger than 28 years old. You know what happened? People, smart, but their timing has no teamwork. 'Cause they are one-child family. Teamwork is built when they were in the kids.
When they were in the schools playing team sports, they can understand teamwork better. We, the difference between our company, the other company, is that we spend a lot of time training, developing our people, working like a team, working like a team sports. Teamwork is the number three key values of the company. In America, in the West, probably teamwork is something, you know, you have to be there. For us, this make the difference. Because we work like a team, we are powerful and better than most of the competitors. This is what I want to say, that sports is such a virgin land for them. It takes about 10 years. It's not about a one-year job. Entertaining? Guys, ask how many your Chinese friends watch TV in the evening. Nobody. Why? The content too bad.
Why people watching the video on the internet? The content is better. If your people do not watch TV because the content is too bad, that's the opportunity. If we can make the content better, if we can work the things, the society happy, government happy, people happy, it is a huge thing. Make young people happy. Make young people more positive. I think our movie also industry has a big problem, right? A lot of problem. Now that the market is there, I personally invest, supported that. I believe this industry. Nine years ago, I invested the Huayi Brothers. Nobody believed it. I put the money in the Huayi Brothers. I changed their business model, giving advice two hours every three months. Huayi Brothers is the largest movie company in China.
I told Huayi Brothers, the chair, Dennis Wang, I said, ''10 years later, China movie industry will be big.'' It proved. I will tell you, 10 years later, China movie industry will be much bigger than today, but definitely will be different model like today. Alibaba should support the young people, make them happy, make them healthy. If only by the people, the true population we have, how can we make people happy and health? That's the key. By the way, we spend very little money for 10 years, it's going to be another wonderful business. I will say whether American sports and American entertainment bring so much economic return for America, and China also have this chance. Finally, investor look at the company whether it's good or not. It's not about the product.
It's not about how much it sells. It's about the people, the value, the vision, how many people you have. In my apartment, year 2000, it was a sad day. We tried to hire people, nobody joined, only the 18 people. Lot of people came to us and say, "Jack, we cannot find a boyfriend, girlfriend." Right? Because this company sounds strange, Alibaba, and in an apartment. We are talking about we'll be the top 10 websites in the world. We are building up a company last for 100 years. You know, my parents think I'm crazy. I said, "Let's work together. Someday this kind of company will be proud of this city.
Someday this company will be the proud of this province, with the proud of China, and the proud of young, this young generation. Only by work, only by believing we in the internet, only by believing that internet is so new to everybody, 1999, we have to work, and we have to learn quickly. 'Cause only we learn not from copy the Sina, not copy the Sohu, not copy NetEase, not copy this model. Guys, have you thought about the numbers? Year 2006, you know, new Year 2002, Sina's revenue, our revenue, Sina's profit is much better than our revenues. Year 2006, our revenue is equals to their profit. Year 2009, we almost catch up with Sina, Sohu. There's another top sky there is called Tencent. Our total revenue is their quarter's profit. This was so disappointing.
Everyone said, "Oh my God, you know, we've been working so hard to catch up with Sina, Sohu, NetEase," and then another guy is on the sky, and this is so powerful. I said, "Time will come." If we study, keep on learning. If we hire the right people, training them in the right way. If we hire the people not with fancy idea, if we hire the people with the belief like we have, we will make happen. Guys, people say, "The Tencent is always challenging us." No, we are challenge Tencent. They were 2009, 2011, 2012, 2013, they were always much bigger than us. Think about this year and next year. We are catch up. Our next goal is that we will see Well, think about Apple, think about Google.
Think about Apple and Google put together. It depends on how you can make the world create the value. How can you solve the problem of the world? How you can hire the people and giving them the platform they can develop their skills, they can promote, and they can do things. This is what we believe. We think the most important thing is the people. In my apartment, I said, "Someday, Alibaba boys and girls can easily find boyfriends and girlfriends." That is why 2005, May the 10th, we have start that year, we always have Ali Festival. Invite all the parents coming. Me, as the CEO, spend a half an hour report to. I never report to the investors, but report to the parents. Boyfriends and girlfriends and husbands, what we did last year, what we are going to do. Daniel is the CEO.
Daniel start to do this year talk, report to the, to the parents. You know, what we did, what to get the support from the families and friends. That we did, and also, I have a vision in Chinese called [Non-English content] . In Chinese, we were excellent generals as many as like an ocean. We have a wow, excellent, beautiful ladies in the company like the flying cloud in the sky. We want as many as people as possible that are great, smart young men and smart girls. Guess what? We made it happen. Today, more than 40% of the employee of the company are women. They're beautiful, y ou walk on the campus. They're smart, 33%, 34% of the management of the company are women, a nd 33% of the senior management are women.
We're women CEO, CFO, and women COO, and women president. We also have. Our competitors, they have a famous CEO. Maybe a great, whatever O, right? Checking us how many great generals and marshals we have. Joe even cannot be one of the top 10 generals. We have so many Joe, Mike, and Maggie, people sitting there, and you see that we have a third layers. Daniel and I discuss about our fourth, you know, Daniel, the second generation, and third generation. Daniel and I discussed the fourth generation of Alibaba leadership, how we can spend time on them. My job today, Joe, and also Daniel, I spend at least 40% of my time finding, developing, coaching the young people. It's all about the people that make the difference.
All right, Joe is, time is up. All right, all done. I know you have a lot of questions, especially about, you know, people say, "So what is the big problem with IP?" You know, counterfeit issues. If you wanna discuss about that, I can discuss three days without stopping one minute. There's a Q&A in the afternoon. We protect the IP. We are the world-leading fighters of the counterfeit. We are not sell and buy. We are governing the marketplaces. We hate. Asking one fell. Social statistic, every seven people, there's one guy of them is a bad guy. This is social statistic. You put seven people in a room, two hours later, one of guy is a bad guy.
30% of the people normally not that good, including us. We do seven things, one of the things may be bad. This is social statistic, you believe or not. I mean, it works. Every six people, there will be one leader inside. We got more than half a billion people, 500 million people in our platform. 10% of them are bad guys. How many bad guys we got? 50 million bad guys. If 50 million bad guys, 10% of them are really bad guy, we got 5 million. We are the economy in the world that sells more than $500 billion. Where the money, there's bad guys. To deal with them, we don't have a police, we don't have a court. We only have young people using technology and fighting against them.
We have more than 2,000 people fighting against them. This thing, this is a war. It's fighting against human instinct. Every fake product we sell, people buy from us, we are losing five customers. We are the victims of that; we never stop fighting. We are today the world-leading fighter for the counterfeit things. We protect IP. Also, I want to tell you one thing. In China, in the world, there's a new thing comes up. Last century, there are about 5,000 branded companies control, using their business model, control all the luxury brand. They're using the money, brand, quality, social, and they're using the channels control. They do not produce. They're using a lot of OEM. China is the nation with the world largest OEM base. This OEM, at that time, they don't have a brand.
They don't have the channels. Guys, think about today Internet become the channel. Internet become the brand presence. This OEM suddenly realized, ''Oh, my God, I can fake my own products and sell online.'' The problem comes. The problem is that the fake products today, they make better quality, better price than the real product, than the real names. They have exact the factories. They have exact raw materials. They do not using that name. IP, we have to protect the IP. We have to do anything to stop the fake products. Those OEM, they are making the products that better service, better price. They are coming back. We also have to think about one thing. The way of doing business has changed. We would love to working with the brand companies.
It's not the fake products, not IP destroying them. It's the new business model. It's also revolutionized the whole road. Something is happening. I don't know. We can discuss about that. But the fake products, I promise you guys, counterfeit and fake brands, products, IP things, we are more and more confident than ever in this world that we can solve the problem. We cannot solve the problem 100 because it's the fighting against human instinct. We can solve the problem better than any government, any organizations, any people in the world. If you do not agree, let's have a competition.
Let's have a competition. Pick up the one or maybe 10,000 products on Tmall, JD, and all, any offline shops, you name it. Let's have a competition. Who has more fake products? Who can trace and fight and arrest these guys earlier? We do. We can make a bet on that.
This is our confidence about it. The technology is going to trace who's buying from the seller, who's manufacturing. The only thing is that we need law enforcement to arrest this guy. We already put 700 people in the prison in the past years, which nothing like this happened in China history. We have already, you know, confiscated, destroyed millions of shops. This is the war, you know? It's not the war of Alibaba. It's the war of this industry. It is the war of this internet revolution. It is the war of e-commerce. Let's do it together. This cannot stop us. Today, things changed. We getting happier. The counterfeit guys got unhappy. Years ago, they are happy. Now, the world balance is changed. All right, thank you, Joe, for signaling. That's it. Thank you very much.
Thank you so much, Jack. Our next speaker is our CEO, Daniel Zhang. We'll welcome him to the stage.
Good morning. Just now, Jack spent so much time sharing with you the vision, mission of our company. Now it's my turn to share with you how we make this happen. By doing that's still start with from our mission. Everybody knows Alibaba mission is make it easy to do business anywhere. We set up this mission when we start this company. We know that we are in a very fast-changing world. Today, because of internet, the way of doing business is totally changed. Today, when a young guy start up a new business, he can select internet to create his new business and new services. Today, a people who produce good products, he can set up a new channel online to sell and market his products.
Today, for a marketer to promote his brands, he can select the e-channel to do his promotion, to do his brand advertisement. Today, the way of doing business is totally changed. The other thing is that today, look at our consumer base. This year is 2016. We always said in China, we always said we are aiming to serve the young generation. We are aiming to serve the people born after the 1990s. Even the people born after the 1990s, they are already 26 years old. They have their first job. They have stable income. Most important thing is that they are a generation from very beginning is not working on Internet. It's the living on Internet.
In terms of the people's lifestyle, in terms of people's consumption pattern, are totally changed. Last thing, the most important thing is that today, the access points to the internet is changing very, very fast. 15 years ago, when we talk about internet, actually, we use a keyboard to get access to internet. Maybe five years ago, we start rolling the small screen and click. That's the way we get access to internet. How about future? We believe actually this disruptive change will very soon to come, will change our way to get us to internet. All these fast-changing things determine that we have to transform our business models, transform our service to realize, to fulfill our mission, to help people to continue to do business easier in this fast-changing world.
Now I want to share with you the business picture, the big business picture of Alibaba Group. Just now, Jack said that Alibaba's mission is to be the fifth largest global economy. To achieve that, we want to build up the infrastructure of the new economy. We believe commerce, payment, logistics, marketing, and cloud computing are the infrastructure of every single new business, new economy. Alibaba want to build a ecosystem to generate the business, to help our partners to generate business in each of these elements. Most important thing is for all these five, commerce, payment, logistics, marketing, and the cloud computing, is our use case to generate data. Substantially, Alibaba is a data company.
The way we look at how to help the business doing better is that use the data, but use the data to refine, to refuel the operations, refuel the ecosystem, to help our partners to do business better. For commerce piece, people are familiar with Taobao, with Tmall, with Alibaba.com. These our actually our first-generation business. We start with our B2B Alibaba.com and Alibaba domestic trading. We had our Taobao, we `have our Tmall, we have our retail platforms. In recent years, we developed our Rural Taobao program. We get access to the rural areas. We had our AliExpress. We start to sell from China to other markets.
Our latest development is that we acquired Lazada in Southeast Asia because there are more than 500 million consumers in that region. All this business, actually they want in these marketplaces, over 90% of the services and products are physical products. We try to roll this out, leverage the user base in this marketplace, to roll this out to other categories. As Jack said, we want to achieve the Double H strategy. How to start from now? The only way to do this is that to leverage the user base we have today to expand to new category, like digital products. That's why we acquired Youku, which very important in this mobile world, when people spend a lot of time in video site. We developed our AliMusic, Alisports business.
They are very young business. They are just in a very early stage. We develop our smart home OTT business, which is a smart box and smart TV business. We have our UCWeb business, and we develop it as a mobile media. Mobile media and entertainment actually is the extension of our marketplaces to a new area, and extension of our category to a new area. Last one actually is a local service. Because this local service constitutes trillions of market size. We invest through our affiliate company, Koubei, and through our investment, investee company, Ele.me. We develop our own Alitrip business, because travel is so important elements in the local service. This is our big picture of Alibaba Group.
All these commerce business are supported by payment. Some are supported by logistics, some supported by marketing services, and all supported by cloud. That's the linkage. That's the rationale of our business landscape. Most important thing, again, is that the data play the most important role in this ecosystem. We get the data from all these business, and we use the data, and we mine the data, we process the data, and we create the value from the data we have. We generate and refuel the operation, refuel the operation not only for our own platform, but also refuel the operation of the participants in the ecosystem. Let's talk about our goals. Our goals are very clear. We have a near-term goal, which is in fiscal year 2020.
For our retail business, we want to have a business with over $1 trillion GMV. We are on the right track. Last year, we had a very important milestone. The first time our GMV in RMB exceeded RMB 3 trillion . We have a next three, four y ears to go to achieve our $1 trillion goal. How to achieve that? I think most important thing first is to continue to acquire new customers. That's why we invest a lot in our rural areas, in urban settings, in campers, in young generations. That's why we develop a new market in Southeast Asia, and that are all the ways for us to acquire new customers.
Second growing engine is the expansion of our categories. As I said, we start from our physical product category, and we extend to our digital products and the local services. Even in physical product categories, for some category, like food and groceries, like cars and luxuries and home decoration, et cetera, today, for these categories, the penetration, online penetration is still quite low. Having said that, the most important thing to achieve $1 trillion goal is not about the growth of the online GMV. The most important thing to achieve this $1 trillion goal is to help our offline partner to experience a successful digital transformation, to transform today offline GMV, about RMB 30 trillion, to be a digital GMV. We believe with the infrastructure we have, with the data we have, we can help a lot to these partners to digitalize their business.
That's the way we look at the landscape. We also have a long-term goal. In 20 years, we wanna be an economy to serve 2 billion consumers around the world. Today, actually we have, in terms of the user base, actually we have more than actually more than 500 million. In terms of active buyer, our latest disclosure, actually in last quarter is about 223 million. How to expand our user base? Again, we have to invest in rural, which in China actually have over half of the population in the really real rural areas. In China, there are over 600,000 rural villages. Actually, where the traditional brick-and-mortar chains cannot easily cover. We will continue to invest in the young generation, and we continue to invest in the arising new market.
For strategies, today, our strategies are very clear. Rural, globalization, cloud computing, and big data. Jack spent a lot of time elaborating this. I don't wanna repeat again. We do everything, every single business following our strategies. We believe these strategies are critical for us to execute, to do a very good execution to achieve our goals in the near term and in the long term. Here I wanna share with you a roadmap of the business evolution in our company. Alibaba is a very interesting company. When we started at 1999, we never dreamed that we could be a company like that, and like a ecosystem. We start with our B2B business. We have our Taobao, we have our Tmall.
Here, actually we see that the evolution actually always happened with a great mission, but we always start from now, from what we have today, to leverage what we have today to realize, to fulfill our mission in the future. We the first thing is that we try to evolve to serve the people with physical products in our retail marketplaces to the digital products and to the local services. Second, we try to help the e-commerce platform expanded to be a enlarged e-commerce and media platforms. That's also one of the most important reasons for us to invest in the video site, in Youku and Tudou, invest in our OTT, invest in UC. This always, all these assets give us a very good media metrics on the, on top of the e-commerce platform.
We are the only company who have the data both from the e-commerce and from the, and from all these media assets, in one basket, in one pool, and we can serve our merchants in this enlarged closed loop. Next one, actually, day one, when we start Alibaba, we said we'll help people to meet at Alibaba. When we start our retail platform business, we said that we help people to trade at Alibaba. That's Taobao and Tmall. Now, actually, we are working for helping people working on Alibaba. That's the goal of our AliCloud, because cloud computing and big data is essential elements for all of the new business and for all of the digitalized business.
Next one, as I said, actually, seven years ago, when we start our Taobao Marketing Services, actually, we view this as a closed loop in our e-commerce platform. We have advertisers, which are our merchants on the marketplaces, and they buy marketing services for the benefit of their sales in the marketplaces. Today, we believe that with enlarged platforms, e-commerce plus media, we can help our partners, our merchants, to do both branding and the performance-based ads. To help them not only to drive the current immediate sales, but also to help them to build a brand, to establish the interaction with the customers. Last one. For AliCloud, day one, we build up our AliCloud business to resolve our own problem.
As Jack introduced, actually, we realized, overnight, oh, my God, our business growing, but we spend too much money on the infrastructure, on the hardware. How to resolve these issues? How to help us to successfully survive in every year's November 11? That's the original of building up the cloud service, to serve our internal, because our marketplace is big enough to be a cloud. Day two, we realized that this could be benefit not only for ourself, but also to serve all the business want to be a digital business. Today, we try to extend our user base, not only for our merchants on our e-commerce marketplace, but also a lot of third-party companies, a lot of small developers, even a lot of governments.
Today, every cities, every province are thinking of to being a smart city, smart province, to monitor the, a lot of function, transportations, healthcare, a lot of things using the digital way. The last one, I wanna share with you that the synergies we can generate in our ecosystem when we develop a new business. We start to start our Globalization, for example, the first thing we think about is that how to leverage the user base we have today in China and bring more and more overseas good products and services to China. When we think about how to generate the synergy of Youku, Tudou today, is that, yes, today for video industry, everybody talk about paying number. Everybody talk how to acquire new paying number in the paying program, in the VIP program.
What we think about today is how to leverage the over 400 million active users who use to consume on our platforms, who has the payment method to be a paying member for our new business, for the digital service, for the local services. We try to leverage the user base we have to help the new business to grow. Second, to leverage the merchant base we have today to give them new opportunity and the new market channels. This is extremely important when we decide to move to the rural areas, when we decide to go to other markets.
I can share with you that right after our announcement of Lazada deal, I received a lot of calls from our partners saying that "Daniel, now tell me, how can you help us, not only sell in China, but also help us to go to Southeast Asia?" Obviously, we have a very solid merchant base, not only the brand partner, but also a lot of SMEs, OEMs are on our retail platforms, on our wholesale platforms. Today, we can help them to go to the real rural areas which their traditional channels cannot access. We can help them build a e-road to go to other markets. That's the synergies we wanna realize when we developing new business. Next one is for marketing. As I said, for all the marketers, they just do business here.
Actually, they just spend trade marketing dollar on our platform to drive their e-commerce business. Today, everybody think about omni-channel is the future for a digitalized business. It's not only about the immediate sales purely online, it's about the brand building, it's about customer acquisition and retention in omni-channel. With the enlarged e-commerce and the media platforms, we can help our marketers to achieve their goals, not only to drive the sales, but also for brand building, and most important thing is customer management. Finally, for cloud computing. Yes, our cloud computing business today is covering a lot of new areas, new industries. They are not necessarily linked to e-commerce. E-commerce is one vertical category in cloud computing business. With this base, we can have a scale infrastructure. Everybody knows that for cloud computing business, scale is the key.
If we have enough scale, we can generate economics from the large scale. We leverage this scale and expand to other categories to help the government, to help the SOEs, to help the small developers to make their business on the cloud. That's the way we look at how to do our existing business and how to develop our next generation business. Finally, before I wanna share with you that how Alibaba view our business evolution and our new business opportunity, and how to achieve our goal in 10 and in 20 years. Yes, we always have a very missionary goal, but we always very solidly stand on the ground.
We always start from now and look at what we have today, what we can rely on to develop for the new business and to capture the new opportunities. Just like Joe, shared in the last earnings call, actually, we always look at today's business. Everybody realize that these are the main business, and actually, we don't worry about this. Actually, everybody recognize these are our main business. The most important thing is what we always invest the business which we believe will be the main business in 5- 10 years. We have to invest, and the most important thing for this new business is not about the bottom line. It's not about profitability. It's about can we hit the pain points of the customers.
If we can hit the pain points, that means we create the value. At the end of day, we can find the ways to generate revenue, generate profit from this business. Last and most important thing is that in our big family, we also give a lot of flexibility for our manager, for our staff to incubate very tiny business for even longer period. We still give them the flexibility to doing which they are interested. We still invest in the future. For example, today, when we talk about what's the next generation of the internet, what's the access points of internet? We start to invest our operating system nine years ago.
Today, actually, we see that, okay, today, when we become a approaching to the IoT, and everybody understand the operating system can play a very important role in this IoT times. That's the way we look at our business and look at the evolution of our business. Finally, I will say, yes, today is beautiful. We have such a robust ecosystem. I think if we can do the right thing, and we always follow the mission we have, and execute very solidly by leveraging the resources we have today, and we can have a even better future. Thank you.
Thank you so much.