Title : Alibaba - The Inside Story Behind Jack Ma and the creation of the World's Biggest Online Marketplace
Writers : Liu Shiying & Marta Avery
Pages : 251
Publisher : HarperCollins

Jack Ma's work allows millions of small companies to use the internet as their business instrument and in turn support China's ability in world trade. Various difficulties must be overcome by Jack Ma from Jack's lack of knowledge about the internet and also limited facilities of internet in China at that time. Most of his friends rejected Jack Ma's ideas when he founded his initial company, China Yellow Pages. Jack Ma continued to move forward and tried although he was lack of support.

“You go out and charge around . . .  if it Darkest Before Dawn doesn’t work, you can always bow out. But if you just think over  thousands of things at night and in the morning keep on walking  the same old path, you never get anywhere. You don’t grow. You  might as well try.” (page 24-25)

Also how Jack Ma convinced prospective of customers who were still confined to the traditional mindset to switch their marketing products on the internet. When Jack Ma decided the name Alibaba for the company he was going to establish, he bravely wasted 10 thousand USD just to buy the Alibaba domain.

In 1997, China began changing policies and opening up to the internet use and now there are hundred millions of internet users in China. The Chinese government also supports the construction of fiber backbone infrastructure that allows most internet users in the country to connect with broadband fast connections that have led the country to the digital era.

Jack Ma idolizes Louis Cha (Jin Yong) and describes his business strategy as wuxia with various terms obtained from Jin Yong's novel. Incidentally, Jin Yong and Jack Ma were born in the same province, Zhejiang. Jack Ma read "The Smiling Proud Wanderer" repeatedly compared to other books he had read. He really admired Feng Qingyang's figure.

This book does not only tells about Jack Ma's life journey from zero to the success of his  business. But it also tells how the Chinese government's policies and the rapid development of internet and telecommunications infrastructure helped accelerate China's economic miracle.

There are many interesting things in this book. Hopefully Jack Ma's life story is able to inspire Indonesian people about the development of cheap, fast and accessible internet network infrastructure to the wider community which in turn will have a positive impact on the progress of society.