Jack Ma is making his secret business in rural China

With an estimated net worth of $US23 billion, Alibaba CEO Jack Ma is one of the richest people on earth. His e-commerce company is now worth more than $US200 billion.

净资产估值230亿美元，阿里巴巴总裁马云成为世界最富有的人。现今其电子商务公司市值超过2000亿美元。

But Ma’s success didn’t just fall from the sky. He grew up poor and was rejected from dozens of jobs before fighting his way to founding one of the largest internet companies in the world. Now Ma wants to help others replicate his success. In order to do so, Ma’s deploying a pretty unique strategy.

马云的成功并不是从天而降。他出身贫寒，在其成功运营当今最大的互联网公司之一——阿里巴巴前，他也无数次求职碰壁。现在马云想要帮助其他人重现成功。为了能够切实的帮助到别人，马云制定了一个相当独特的战略。

According to Jim Kim, World Bank’s president, Ma looks for rural Chinese villages with no internet connection. Then he builds the infrastructure needed for them to start and expand their own companies. Kim explained it in more detail in an interview with Quartz:

据世界银行行长金镛说，马云寻找没有网络连接的中国农村，替这些农村建立所需的基础设施，让他们能够自行运营，扩大公司规模。金在接受新闻网站Quartz采访的时，对此作出了详细说明：

“The latest thing Ma told me was, ‘We’re identifying the villages where there is no access to internet. Then we go out there, as long as there is a road and there is cell phone service — and there is cell phone service just about everywhere — and I’ — Jack told me this — ‘I go and find two or three young women who are very savvy and have learned computers. I give them a computer, and they start taking orders for the whole village.'”

“最近马云告诉我，‘我们正在寻找网络不发达的农村。我们去那儿，只要那儿道路畅通，有手机信号——要到处都能接收到手机信号，那么我’，马云是这么说的：‘我会找两三个领悟力强，学过电脑的女人，给她们一台电脑，她们便可以开始为整村的村民下订单了。’”

This helps that village in a number of different ways. First, it gives everyone in the village a chance to order things like washing machines online at a much affordable price. It also lets those “two or three young women” to carve out a nice little business by taking orders for others. But most importantly, it gives other businesses in the small village a way to reach a bigger market because now they have access to delivery trucks going in and out of that town.

这对农村许多不同方面有所帮助。首先，它使得每个村民都能以更优惠的价格下单购买东西，比如购买洗衣机；它也使得这些“两三个妇女”通过为其他人下单逐渐开始经营自己的小本生意；更重要的是，它为小村落里的其他业务接触更大的市场提供了机会，因为现在村里有运货卡车进出城镇。

“Now that the trucks are going out there delivering the washing machines, they are going back [to the cities] with products from that village, right? He is really changing, in a pretty fundamental way, the model of development,” Kim said.

“现在卡车出城运送洗衣机，然后又运送村里的产品回到市里，对吧！他真的是从根本上改变发展模式。”金说道。

One of the beneficiaries of this model is Huang Jianqiao, a farmer-turned-online bag store owner who’s banking $US4.8 million a year in sales. Because of Alibaba’s online platform, Huang has been able to build a business that sells and delivers to “cities and villages across China,” according to AFP.

真切感受到这种发展模式好处的其中一个人——黄建桥，他是农民出身现在转型为在线女包网店店主，其每年销售额达480万美元。借助阿里巴巴的在线平台，黄已经能够在全国的城市和农村之间进行业务销售往来。据法新社报道。

“Now we can stay with our family when doing Internet business, and we earn more than working in other cities,” Huang told AFP.

黄告诉法新社，“我们可以边做网店生意，边和家人待一起，我们比在其他城市工作赚的更多。”

Kim said Ma personally reached out to him recently to ask for assistance in spreading his strategy to other parts of the world, like Africa, South Asia, and Latin America. He didn’t further elaborate on how they plan on working together, but Kim already seems pretty fascinated by the potential of Ma’s strategy in other countries.

金说马云最近私下联系他，希望他能帮助他将其战略扩散到全球其他地方，比如非洲，南亚和拉丁美洲。他没有进一步说明他们计划要怎么合作，不过金似乎已经对马云进军其他国家市场战略的未来前景很感兴趣。

“People in rural areas who otherwise might have gone to the city or not found work are running their own companies, and these are former farmers,” he said.

“农村地区有些人可能已经去过城市或还没找到工作，现在他们已经有自己的事业，这些人曾经都是农民。”他说。