FT2013年度人物评选奖项得主 马云

Early in 1999, Mr Ma gathered 17 friends and founded Alibaba in his apartment in Hangzhou, giving rousing lectures that revealed his ambition, his vision and his fighting spirit.
1999年初，马云联合17位朋友在他位于杭州的公寓里创建了阿里巴巴。他发表了励志演讲，展示了自己的雄心、愿景和战斗精神。

“Chinese brains are just as good as theirs and this is the reason we dare to compete with Americans,” Mr Ma told his comrades in a speech that was caught on camera. “If we’re a good team and we know what we want to do then one of us can defeat 10 of them.”
马云在这段被录制下来的演讲中向他的战友们表示：“中国人的大脑和美国人一样聪明，这正是我们敢于和他们竞争的原因。如果我们是一个优秀的团队，而且我们知道自己想要做什么，那么我们就能以一当十。”

Alibaba’s model was simple: allow small and medium-sized Chinese companies to find global buyers they would otherwise only be able to meet at trade shows. It worked brilliantly.
阿里巴巴的模式非常简单：帮助中国的中小企业找到原本只能在交易会上见到的全球买家。这种模式取得了极大的成功。

In 2003, Alibaba made its first tiny profit and launched Taobao (“search for treasure”) to compete with US ecommerce group eBay, which then dominated in China with market share of about 80 per cent.
2003年，阿里巴巴首次实现了小额盈利，同时为了与美国电子商务集团eBay竞争而创建了淘宝网，当时eBay在中国占据主导地位，拥有大约80%的市场份额。

In a series of interviews with global media, Mr Ma announced he was “going to war” with eBay. At the time, it seemed like a comical mismatch.
在接受全球媒体的一系列采访时，马云宣布与eBay“开战”。当时，这种宣战显得有些可笑，因为双方实力悬殊。

By 2007, eBay’s market share in China had dropped to less than 8 per cent and it had in effect quit the market. Taobao’s share price had soared to 84 per cent, making Mr Ma the unrivalled king of Chinese ecommerce.
到2007年，eBay在中国的市场份额降至不足8%，实际上已经退出了中国市场。淘宝的市场份额飙升至84%，这让马云成为了无可匹敌的中国电商之王。

He struck a landmark deal with his old friend Mr Yang in 2005, with Yahoo paying $1bn for a 40 per cent stake in Alibaba and handing its China operations over to Mr Ma to run.
2005年，他与自己的老朋友杨致远达成了里程碑式的协议：雅虎支付10亿美元收购阿里巴巴40%的股权，并将其中国业务交给马云运营。

In taking over Yahoo China, Alibaba inherited a scandal that would cast a shadow over Mr Ma’s reputation in the west but cement his image as a safe pair of hands in the eyes of the Chinese government.
阿里巴巴接管雅虎中国(Yahoo China)的同时也继承了一桩丑闻，这将为马云在西方的形象带来阴影，但巩固了其在中国政府眼里办事可靠的形象。

Yahoo’s earlier decision to hand over private email information to the Chinese authorities had led to at least two Chinese journalists and democracy advocates being thrown in prison for subversion.
此前，雅虎将私人邮件信息移交给中国有关部门的决定，导致了至少两名中国记者和民主人士因颠覆罪被捕入狱。

When asked how he would handle such a situation now that he was in charge of Yahoo’s China operations, Mr Ma’s reply was unambiguous.
当时有记者问马云，既然你现在负责雅虎中国业务，你将如何处理这种局面，他的回答相当干脆。

“We create value for the shareholders and the shareholders don’t want us to oppose the government and go bankrupt,” he told reporters at the time. “Whatever [government officials] say, we’ll do it.”
马云向记者表示：“我们为股东创造价值，股东不希望我们与政府作对，走上破产之路。无论（政府官员）说什么，我们都会配合。”

When asked last week in the interview about the challenges of dealing with the Chinese government, Mr Ma pointed out that there had never been an organisation in China or perhaps anywhere that is as large as Alibaba. It boasts more than 600m registered accounts and welcomes about 100m shoppers a day.
在上周采访中被问及与中国政府打交道的种种挑战时，马云指出，中国（或许全世界）从来没有阿里巴巴这么大的企业。阿里巴巴号称有6亿多注册账户，每天有大约1亿人通过其平台购物。

“At the beginning I thought the government would worry,” Mr Ma said. “[But] we focus on business and the creation of jobs. The government seems to feel more comfortable now.”
马云说道：“起初我以为政府会感到不安。（但）我们致力于商业和创造就业。政府现在似乎放心多了。”

To his employees he has often said that Alibaba should “be in love with the government but never marry it”. Over the years he has repeatedly turned down offers to establish joint ventures with the state.
在公司内部，他经常对员工表示，阿里巴巴应该“跟政府谈恋爱但不要嫁给他们”。多年来，他一再拒绝了与政府建立合资企业的提议。

Apart from the Chinese government, Mr Ma seems willing to pick a public fight with almost anyone.
除了中国政府以外，马云似乎愿意与几乎所有人公开作对。

That includes Alibaba investors such as Yahoo and, most recently, the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, which this year refused to change its listing rules to accommodate the corporate structure Alibaba would like to use for its forthcoming IPO.
这包括雅虎等阿里巴巴投资者，最近还有香港交易所(Hong Kong Stock Exchange)。香港交易所今年拒绝为了配合阿里巴巴希望采用的股权结构而修改上市规则。

Within Alibaba, this fighting spirit is celebrated constantly and employees – or “Alipeople” as they are called – assume nicknames taken from characters in the kung fu novels that Mr Ma loved to read as a young man.
在阿里巴巴内部，这种战斗精神不断得到赞扬，而员工们（他们被称为“阿里人”）几乎都有一个来自马云年轻时非常喜欢阅读的武侠小说的化名。

This is more than a gimmick for Mr Ma, whose own nickname – “Feng Qingyang” – comes from a reclusive swordsman character who was uNPRedictable and aggressive.
对马云来说，这不只是一种噱头。马云自己的绰号是“风清扬”，它来自一个隐居山中的剑侠角色，行事不可预测而且非常好斗。

“People don’t realise how much martial arts and kung fu novels influence Jack and his strategy for business,” says a former confidant. “They also helped shape his idealism because they are all about upholding the righteous way.”
马云以前的一位密友表示：“人们没有意识到武术和武侠小说对马云及其企业战略的影响有多大。它们还帮助塑造了马云的理想主义，因为它们的要义都是弘扬正义。”

Outside the ruling Communist party it is hard to find anyone today in China who has had a bigger impact on the lives of ordinary people than Mr Ma.
在执政的共产党以外，在当今中国很难找到另一个人像马云一样，对普通人的生活影响如此之大。

His decision to address some of the biggest problems facing China shows that his ambition extends far beyond changing the way people do their shopping. In an essay published this year, he laid out the scope of his vision.
他决定应对中国一些最大的问题，这表明他的雄心远不止改变人们的购物方式。在今年发表的一篇文章中，他阐述了自己的愿景。

“Just as the internet is revolutionising retail,” Mr Ma wrote, “we at Alibaba believe it will eventually do the same to fundamentally information-driven industries such as finance, education and healthcare. Once this change happens – once we are all connected – I believe the spirit of equality and transparency at the heart of the internet will make it possible for Chinese society to leapfrog in its development of a stronger institutional and social infrastructure.”
马云写道：“就像互联网正在改写零售业那样，在阿里巴巴，我们相信它最终也将转变那些根本上由信息驱动的行业，比如金融、教育和医疗。一旦发生这种变化，一旦我们全面实现互联互通，我相信，互联网核心的平等与透明精神，将让中国社会有可能在发展更强大的制度和社会基础设施方面实现飞跃。”

But he also included a warning: “Our water has become undrinkable, our food inedible, our milk poisonous and worst of all the air in our cities is so polluted that we often cannot see the sun,” he wrote. “Twenty years ago, people in China were focusing on economic survival. Now, people have better living conditions and big dreams for the future. But these dreams will be hollow if we cannot see the sun.”
但他也提出了警告：“现在我们的水不能喝了，食物不能吃了，牛奶有毒，最糟糕的是，我们的城市空气污染如此严重，以至于我们经常看不到太阳。20年前，中国人只想着经济生存。现在人们的生活条件变好了，对未来有更远大的梦想。但如果我们看不到太阳，这些梦想将是空洞的。”