阿里巴巴擬挺進中國金融和醫療行業

Alibaba is looking to transform state-dominated sectors of the Chinese economy, such as financial services and healthcare, a senior executive said yesterday, as Chinese consumers set a new record for online sales on Singles’ Day.

中國消費者創下“光棍節”網上購物的新紀錄之際，阿里巴巴(Alibaba)的一位高管昨日表示，該公司正努力轉變金融服務和醫療等國家主導的行業。

Joe Tsai, executive vice-chairman of Alibaba, told the Financial Times that financial services and healthcare were large but “very antiquated” industries where ecommerce could “roll out to reform the current system”.

阿里巴巴副董事長蔡崇信(Joe Tsai)對英國《金融時報》表示，金融服務和醫療保健產業很大，但“非常陳舊”，電子商務在這些行業可以“推動對當前體系的改革”。

Alibaba executives used Singles’ Day, the company’s biggest event since its initial public offering in September, to lay out its next steps. “Aside from ecommerce in goods we’re also looking at ecommerce in services, in entertainment, in different types of content over the internet,” said Mr Tsai.

阿里巴巴的高管們利用光棍節來闡述下一步計劃，光棍節是該公司自9月首次公開發行(IPO)以來最大的活動。蔡崇信說：“除了商品電子商務，我們還着眼於服務、娛樂及互聯網上各類內容的電子商務。”

The raw power of ecommerce to change China was on display yesterday as an auditorium-sized billboard at Alibaba headquarters blinked massive sales totals for the day. The company – now almost $40bn larger than Walmart by market capitalisation – said a record $8bn worth of goods had been sold via its services, up from $5.8bn last year.

昨天電子商務展現出了改變中國的原始力量，在阿里巴巴總部，一塊巨大的電子屏幕閃爍着當天的銷售總額。如今市值高出沃爾瑪(Walmart)近400億美元的阿里巴巴表示，共有價值571億元人民幣（約93億美元）的商品通過其服務售出，超過了去年的362億元人民幣（約59億美元），創下了銷售額紀錄。

The Singles’ Day holiday, when unattached adults buy gifts for themselves, was created by students in 1993, but Alibaba has turned it into a festival of conspicuous consumption that has surpassed world shopping records. “The Chinese economy was traditionally based on exports,” Mr Tsai said. “Now we’re witnessing the shift of the economy from [one] driven by [the] state sector to one focused on the consumer.”

光棍節是單身成年人爲自己購買禮物的節日，原本由學生羣體在1993年創建，但阿里巴巴已將它轉變成一個炫耀性消費節日，創下了購物的世界紀錄。蔡崇信說：“中國經濟傳統以出口爲基礎。現在我們正見證着這個經濟體從國有部門帶動轉型爲專注於消費者的經濟。”

But he acknowledged Alibaba’s moves into state-dominated industries have not been as smooth as it hoped. He admitted the group’s plans for rolling into financial services, such as online money market fund Yu’e Bao, had been dealt “a setback” by the Central Bank’s decision to block plans for a virtual credit card last spring. Internet competition would have hurt Union Pay, the state credit card monopoly.

但他承認阿里巴巴進入國家主導行業並沒有它希望的那麼順利。他承認由於中國央行今年春天否決虛擬信用卡計劃，該集團推進金融服務（如在線貨幣市場基金餘額寶）的計劃已“受挫”。互聯網競爭會損害國家信用卡壟斷體系銀聯(UnionPay)的利益。

“The central bank obviously said, ‘Let’s slow things down a bit. Let’s understand what these innovations are really about and let’s bring reform rather than disruption’,” said Mr Tsai.

蔡崇信說：“央行顯然是說，‘讓我們慢一點。讓我們瞭解下這些創新的實質，我們要的是改革而不是破壞。’”

Plans to list Alipay, Alibaba’s PayPal-like payments service, he added, would focus on an IPO in China due to government regulations limiting foreign ownership in banking.

他又說道，阿里巴巴旗下類似貝寶(PayPal)的支付服務支付寶(Alipay)的上市計劃將專注於在中國IPO，因爲政府規定限制外資持股銀行。