“We have learned to be resilient and to always think about living another day,” Alibaba Chairman Joe Tsai told the audience assembled for the closing ceremony of this year’s BEYOND Expo in Macau.
Tsai shared insights about overcoming adversity, ensuring strategic focus, and making the most of global opportunities amid a rapidly changing business landscape.
Reflecting on the past five years, Tsai candidly described the numerous challenges Alibaba has faced. “If you look at Alibaba for the last five years, there were a ton of setbacks. It’s a confluence of regulatory scrutiny, [and] cracking down on very fierce competition,” he said. “I think we have learned to be resilient and to always think about living another day during this phase, so we have the opportunity to fight back. Now I think we’re on a very good path looking forward.”
Tsai emphasized Alibaba’s resilience and determination to recover by focusing on its core strengths: e-commerce and cloud computing. He also highlighted the company’s commitment to embedding AI throughout its operations, both customer-facing and internal, as a key driver for future growth.
The long-time Alibaba employee also expects AI to help Chinese enterprises go global more easily. “When Chinese companies grow overseas, there is an inherent obstacle: most people around the world don’t speak Chinese, whereas English is spoken everywhere,” he said. “That barrier actually is something that we need to overcome and hopefully with AI, and with translation tools, it’ll make things easier.”
Tsai outlined Alibaba’s strategic roadmap for the next three to five years during an internal company event on May 10, emphasizing that e-commerce and “cloud + AI” will serve as the twin pillars of the Chinese tech giant’s future growth. He repeated this message at Beyond, stressing his belief that artificial intelligence will be the core driving force across all business units.
When discussing the potential of the Asian market, Tsai acknowledged ongoing geopolitical tensions. “Right now, people are trying to tear down the bridge between the West and Asia,” he said. However, he also highlighted the growing economic ties within the region, noting that China’s trade with Southeast Asia is now as significant as its trade with the United States. Tsai sees strong potential for deeper business engagement across East Asia, Southeast Asia, and South Asia, particularly in populous developing countries such as India and Pakistan. He added that Europe could serve as an attractive alternative market for Asian companies. “I believe that Europe is still an incredible opportunity for Asian companies,” he said.
On the topic of robotics, Tsai shared a distinct perspective: “Most of the smart robots in the world, they don’t need to look like human beings,” he said, despite the current rush to create humanoid machines. “If you want to have a robot come and clean your carpet […] do you really want them to look like human beings? I would get scared.” He then added that humanoid robots still have a lot to overcome on the technical side, especially in the area of spatial intelligence.
