一位中國通鄧肯克拉克眼中的馬雲

In 1999, Duncan Clark gained bragging rights that any long-time China hand would relish today: the former Morgan Stanley investment banker turned business consultant was given the chance to visit the lakeside apartment of Jack Ma.

1999年，鄧肯•克拉克(Duncan Clark)得到了任何一位資深“中國通”在今天都會渴望得到的炫耀資本：這位由摩根士丹利(Morgan Stanley)前投行家轉行的商業顧問有機會參觀馬雲(Jack Ma)坐落在湖畔的公寓。

The flat was the nucleus of a new company that Ma had named Alibaba a few months before, saying he wanted to sell things online in China. To some this seemed a laughable prospect in a country that then had minuscule internet penetration. But if Alibaba was to fail, it would not be for want of trying: you could “count the number of cofounders by the toothbrushes jammed into mugs on a shelf”, Clark writes of the company’s early years. And ultimately, the days and nights spent coding, calling and hustling would be rewarded in 2014 with a $25bn initial public offering, the biggest of all time.

馬雲在數月前剛創辦的新公司阿里巴巴(Alibaba)將從這座公寓起步——馬雲說他想在中國開展在網上銷售商品的業務。在一些人看來，這簡直可笑，因爲當時在中國還沒有多少人使用互聯網。但是，如果阿里巴巴失敗了，也絕不會是因爲沒有去嘗試——克拉克在敘述該公司早年曆史時這樣寫道：數一數架子上塞滿馬克杯的牙刷的數量，你就知道這家公司有多少個聯合創始人。日以繼夜編寫代碼、打電話和奔波忙碌終於在2014年看到了回報，阿里巴巴在首次公開發行中融資250億美元，創下“史上最大規模IPO”的紀錄。

Clark has long been one of the most visible westerners in China’s technology scene. In Alibaba: The House that Jack Ma Built, he draws on a considerable trove of personal reminiscences in addition to dozens of interviews to write what could be the definitive history not just of Alibaba but other titans of the Chinese internet such as Tencent, Sohu, Sina and Baidu — all household names in China but little known in the west.

在中國科技界，克拉克向來是最引人關注的西方人之一。在《阿里巴巴：馬雲的基業》(Alibaba: The House that Jack Ma Built)一書中，他憑藉大量的個人回憶和數十次採訪，寫下了堪稱權威的關於中國互聯網巨頭——不只是阿里巴巴，還有騰訊(Tencent)、搜狐(Sohu)、新浪(Sina)和百度(Baidu)——發展歷史的著作。在中國，這些都是家喻戶曉的名字，在西方卻鮮爲人知。

The author tends to accentuate the positive about Alibaba, referring to his subject throughout as “Jack” and serving up a succession of anecdotes that illustrate his business genius. Many chapters begin with a stirring quote from Ma such as: “The Internet [is like] beer . . . the good stuff is at the bottom. Without the bubbles, the beer is flat and nobody would want to drink it.”

該作者着重講述阿里巴巴的正面情況，從頭到尾把他的主人公稱做“傑克”，併爲讀者奉上一系列體現馬雲經商天分的趣聞軼事。很多章節都是以馬雲振奮人心的名言開始，比如：“互聯網像一杯啤酒……好東西都在底下。沒有沫，啤酒就走味了，沒人想喝。”

But the narrative is at its best when it seeks to place Alibaba in its local context. In Taobao, the eBay-like online marketplace launched by Ma in 2003, Clark sees a virtual reflection of the bustling Yiwu wholesale market just down the road in Alibaba’s home city of Hangzhou — and, beyond that, of Ma’s native Zhejiang province as a whole, which the author describes as “China’s crucible of entrepreneurship”. Blazing with pop-up boxes and floating banner ads, Taobao is about as far away from the clean lines and uncluttered negative spaces of Google as could be imagined.

不過這本書最精彩的地方是在它嘗試把阿里巴巴置於其當地背景之下來敘述的時候。馬雲在2003年創辦了與eBay類似的網上市場淘寶網(Taobao)，在淘寶網的身上，克拉克看到了熙熙攘攘的義烏小商品批發市場——距離阿里巴巴總部所在地杭州市不遠——以及馬雲的家鄉、被克拉克形容爲“中國企業家熔爐”的浙江省——的虛擬版本。不斷有窗口彈出、佈滿浮動的橫幅廣告的淘寶網與谷歌簡單的線條和整潔的負空間簡直是天壤之別。

While the bustling entrepreneurial energy of China’s bricks-and-mortar economy has been reproduced in Taobao and latterly its sister website Tmall, so have the problems — counterfeit goods and some accusations of counterfeit numbers following Alibaba wherever it goes.

儘管淘寶網及後來創辦的姊妹網站天貓(Tmall)重現了中國實體經濟中充沛的創業活力，但是這些網站也傳染了實體經濟中的問題——假貨以及與阿里巴巴如影相隨的關於捏造數字的指責。

Clark gives this side of the story too, offering the most thorough treatment yet of some of the more difficult episodes in Alibaba’s history. In 2011 an argument erupted over the transfer of the Alipay online payments business to a company controlled by Ma, which raised fears among minority shareholders Yahoo and SoftBank that the value of their stakes in Alibaba would be eroded. The investors accused Ma of asset-stripping, while Ma argued that there were solid regulatory reasons for his apparent violation of corporate governance norms. Clark speaks to all the parties concerned, setting out the claims and counterclaims in accessible fashion — and Ma does not come off looking particularly good.

克拉克也介紹了這方面的情況，對阿里巴巴發展歷程中的一些艱難經歷進行了最全面的敘述。2011年，阿里巴巴將在線支付業務支付寶(Alipay)的所有權轉移到馬雲控股的一家公司名下，引發了爭議，少數股東雅虎(Yahoo)和軟銀(SoftBank)擔心它們所持阿里巴巴股份的價值會受到侵蝕。投資者指責馬雲進行資產剝離，而馬雲認爲他表面上違背公司治理規範的行爲從監管方面來說有着充足理由。克拉克與所有相關方進行了交談，以讓人容易理解的方式列出了正、反主張——馬雲表現得並不是特別好。

The last chapter, “Icon or Icarus?”, looks at the future of Alibaba, which has not had a particularly smooth ride from investors since it went public in 2014. After a vertiginous rise in the months following its IPO, Alibaba’s shares sank by 50 per cent before the summer of 2015 was out. In late August, they fell below the $68 IPO price for the first time, and have hovered a little above negative territory ever since.

在最後一章“偶像還是伊卡洛斯？”中，作者展望了阿里巴巴的未來。自從2014年上市以來，阿里巴巴並沒有一直得到投資者另眼相看。在IPO後幾個月裏阿里巴巴的股價大幅上漲，隨後在2015年夏天結束前，其股價暴跌50%。去年8月底，阿里巴巴的股價首次跌破68美元的發行價，自那以來其股價一直徘徊在略高於發行價的水平上。

The book is a must-read for anyone hoping to navigate China’s new economy. Despite being behind the “Great firewall”, China’s internet — thanks largely to Ma — will become a part of everyone’s life sooner rather than later.

對於每個希望在中國新經濟領域闖蕩的人來說，這本書是必讀之作。儘管中國互聯網被隔離在“防火牆”之內，但是它肯定會成爲每個人生活中的一部分，只會早不會晚——而這在很大程度上多虧了馬雲。