阿里巴巴宏偉藍圖的執行人

China’s Singles Day is an annual frenzy of online consumerism that ranks as one of the wonders of the modern commercial world. The 24-hour sale far outstrips Black Friday in the US, on which it was modelled.

中國的“光棍節”(Singles Day)成了網上消費的年度狂歡節，可算是現代商業世界的一項奇蹟。其24小時的銷售額遠超美國黑色星期五(Black Friday)——其模仿的對象。

Last year, Chinese and international superstars including Scarlett Johansson and David Beckham were enlisted to generate a buzz. Singles Day racked up $17.8bn of sales generating some 467m parcels, more than five times more than US consumers spent on Black Friday.

去年，包括斯嘉麗?約翰遜(Scarlett Johansson)、大衛?貝克漢姆(David Beckham)在內的一些中外巨星受邀爲光棍節造勢。光棍節當天銷售額達178億美元，生成約4.67億個包裹，是美國消費者在黑色星期五支出的5倍以上。

The man behind this extravaganza is far from the showman you might expect. Daniel Zhang, the chief executive of Alibaba who developed the concept in 2009, is a mild-mannered, bespectacled accountant who speaks in a quiet hush in a Berlin hotel lobby on a swing through Europe.

這場狂歡背後的男人卻不是你可能以爲的那個愛出風頭的人。現任阿里巴巴(Alibaba)首席執行官的張勇(Daniel Zhang)於2009年提出了這一構想。他戴着一副眼鏡，性格溫和，說話輕聲細語，正在歐洲周遊的他在柏林一間酒店大堂裏接受了採訪（見題圖）。

Mr Zhang was chief financial officer of Taobao, Alibaba’s online shopping site, when the company was looking to expand into the business-to-consumer market. In Alibaba’s fluid management structure, he took responsibility for the project and launched Tmall, as the B2C business is called, on November 11, or Singles Day.

張勇曾是阿里巴巴在線購物網站淘寶(Taobao)的首席財務官，當時阿里巴巴正尋求進軍B2C市場。在阿里巴巴的非固定管理架構中，張勇是該項目的負責人，並推出了天貓(Tmall)這一B2C業務。

“If people are single, they must be alone, so we should give them some shopping fun on Singles Day,” he says.

張勇說：“單身的人肯定是孤獨的，所以我們應該在光棍節給他們一些購物樂趣。”

The concept has grown at a startling rate, like so much else in China’s freewheeling internet market, which has grown from 137m users in 2006 to 731m last year. Retailers offer big discounts on a wide array of goods and consumers save for months to snap up self-indulgent treats, ranging from Buddha-shaped pears to cars. Mr Zhang, however, says he restricts himself to buying jackets and shirts.

就像狂野生長的中國互聯網市場的其他衆多事物一樣——中國網民從2006年的1.37億增至去年的7.31億——光棍節概念以驚人的速度成長起來。在光棍節，零售商對大量商品提供了大幅折扣，消費者們節省數月只爲搶購心儀商品，包括形如佛像的梨、汽車等。不過張勇表示他限制自己只許買外套和襯衫。

The real showman at Alibaba is the company’s super-charged founder, Jack Ma, who has turned the Hangzhou-based start-up into a multinational empire with more than 500m users in some 200 countries. In 2014, Alibaba became the biggest stock market flotation in the world when it listed on the New York Stock Exchange with a valuation of $167.6bn. Today, it boasts a market capitalisation of about $380bn.

阿里巴巴真正愛出風頭的人是該公司精力充沛的創始人馬雲(Jack Ma)，他已經將這家總部位於杭州的初創公司發展成了一家跨國企業，在200來個國家擁有逾5億用戶。2014年，阿里巴巴在紐約證券交易所( New York Stock Exchange)上市，市值達1676億美元，創全球最大上市紀錄。現在其市值約爲3800億美元。

Mr Ma has outlined even more ambitious plans: hitting 2bn users within 20 years and creating a global online commercial platform to promote a new model of trade, called Globalisation 2.0. While Mr Ma tours the world touting his vision to the likes of US president Donald Trump, Mr Zhang is entrusted with delivering Alibaba’s strategic ambition.

馬雲描繪了更宏偉的藍圖：20年內用戶達到20億，打造一個全球網絡商務平臺，以推動一個被稱爲“全球化2.0”(Globalisation 2.0)的新的貿易模式。當馬雲周遊世界，向美國總統唐納德?特朗普(Donald Trump)這樣的對象兜售其願景時，張勇則被託付了實現阿里巴巴戰略目標的責任。

“Jack Ma is a guy with many ideas. He is very, very creative,” says Mr Zhang. “But I’m the guy who always wants to put my foot on the ground.”

張勇說：“馬雲是一個點子很多的人。他非常非常有創意。而我這個人總想要腳踏實地。”

Outlining the three main means to achieve the company’s goals, Mr Zhang says Alibaba will continue to expand internationally; move more deeply into the offline world; and squeeze extra value out of its vast data assets.

張勇概述了實現公司目標的三大途徑，他表示阿里巴巴將繼續進軍國際；更深入線下市場；並從其龐大的數據資產中汲取額外價值。

The first goal involves bringing the rest of the world’s products to China and Chinese products to the rest of the world. To that end, Mr Zhang visited Vinexpo in Bordeaux in June, where Alibaba has been working with French winemakers. As he sees it, Vinexpo has a physical platform, Alibaba has a virtual platform. Together, they can form a powerful combination.

第一個方面涉及將全球其他地區的產品帶到中國，和將中國產品帶到全球其他地區。張勇於6月份參加了法國波爾多的國際葡萄酒及烈酒展覽會(Vinexpo)，阿里巴巴一直與當地多家酒莊有合作。在他看來，Vinexpo擁有實體平臺，而阿里巴巴擁有虛擬平臺，兩者結合可以形成一個強大的組合。

“Selling wine online is not simple. You have to get a lot of input from the wineries, from the chateaux, from the families who have been in the business for so many years. Then bring this culture from France to China,” he says.

他說：“在線賣葡萄酒並非易事。你必須從釀酒廠、酒莊以及浸淫該行業多年的家族那裏大量進貨。然後把這種酒文化從法國帶到中國。”

The company is fixated on expansion in China, aiming to connect the online and the offline world. Long before Amazon snapped up Whole Foods, Alibaba had been buying bricks-and-mortar retail stores, enabling the company to track consumers from one realm to the other. Mr Zhang says China’s online retail market accounts for about 15 per cent of total sales. “It’s all about how to transform the remaining 85 per cent into digital,” he says.

阿里巴巴把焦點放在了在中國的擴張上，立志要連接線上和線下市場。早在亞馬遜收購全食(Whole Foods)之前，阿里巴巴已經在收購實體零售商店，從而實現對消費者從一個活動領域到另一個活動領域的追蹤。張勇表示，中國的在線零售市場約佔零售總售額的15%。他說：“關鍵就是怎麼將剩下的85%轉化爲數字銷售。”

But it would be wrong, in Mr Zhang’s view, to describe Alibaba as an ecommerce platform. The company’s core strength is becoming clear as it sucks up data through its mobile super-apps, which cover shopping, entertainment, finance and social networking.

但張勇認爲將阿里巴巴稱爲電子商務平臺是不對的。該公司的核心力量越來越明顯，它正在通過覆蓋了購物、娛樂、金融和社交網絡的移動端超級應用程序來獲取數據。

“We are positioning ourselves as a data company,” he says. “We have half a billion customers with us with shopping intentions and a method to pay. We know who they are, what they want, what they hate.”

他說：“我們將自己定位爲數據公司。我們有5億個有購物意圖和一種支付方式的用戶。我們知道他們是誰，他們想要什麼，他們討厭什麼。”

This data revolution has enabled Alibaba to create personal credit profiles, known as Sesame scores, for most of its users. In turn, that has facilitated the development of unrelated new businesses, such as Mobike bicycle hire, which assumes that those with high Sesame scores are trustworthy enough not to pay a deposit. But it has also led to privacy concerns as the government uses the data, too.

這一數據革命讓阿里巴巴能夠爲大多數用戶創建了個人信用檔案，即“芝麻信用”。這進而促進了無關的新業務的發展，例如摩拜(Mobike)自行車租賃，後者假設芝麻信用分高的用戶足以信賴，無須支付押金。但由於這些數據也被政府使用，因此也引發了隱私問題。

Mr Zhang has a formidable path ahead of him if he is to realise Mr Ma’s vast ambitions. But he appears unflappable about the challenges and has grown used to accidental events.

張勇若要實現馬雲的雄心壯志，等待他的是一條艱難的道路。但是面對挑戰他似乎毫不慌張，而且已經習慣於意外事件。

In 1995, as a freshly minted finance graduate in Shanghai, Mr Zhang was set to join Barings, the British bank. Then the rogue trader Nick Leeson’s huge losses triggered the bank’s collapse. A spell at Arthur Andersen ended when the accounting firm was hit by the Enron scandal and Chinese operations were subsumed into PwC. Mr Zhang later gained experience working at Shanda, the online gaming company run by one of China’s richest businessmen, Chen Tianqiao.

1995年的上海，剛從金融專業畢業的張勇本準備加入英國巴林銀行(Barings Bank)，卻趕上流氓交易員尼克?裏森(Nick Leeson)造成的鉅額虧損連累這家銀行倒閉。他在安達信會計師事務所(Arthur Andersen)的職業生涯又因這家事務所受安然醜聞打擊、中國業務被併入普華永道而終結。張勇後來進入中國網遊公司盛大工作，該公司的經營者陳天橋是中國最富有的商人之一。

Mr Ma’s outsized personality and the lure of working in such a fast-changing world won him over and he joined Alibaba in 2007. But Mr Zhang still commutes to his home city of Shanghai at weekends to see his family. “I’m single in Hangzhou, that’s why I can spend so much time on work,” he laughs.

馬雲非凡的人格魅力以及在這樣一個快速變化的領域工作的誘惑，贏得了張勇的青睞，他於2007年加入了阿里巴巴。不過張勇每到週末仍會回上海看望家人。他笑道：“我在杭州是單身漢，所以才能將大把時間花在工作上。”

The observer

觀察員

Duncan Clark, author of Alibaba: The House That Jack Ma Built, says Mr Zhang’s skills, experience, and temperament have complemented those of Mr Ma. “He is the necessary adjunct of Jack,” Mr Clark says. “He has a lot of street cred internally having built up Tmall. And as a finance guy he has the ability to speak to investors.

《阿里巴巴：馬雲的基業》(Alibaba: The House that Jack Ma Built)一書的作者鄧肯?克拉克(Duncan Clark)稱張勇的才能、經驗和性情都剛好補充了馬雲的。“他是馬雲必不可少的臂助。把天貓做大爲他在公司內部贏得了大量口碑。而且作爲一名財務人員，他有與投資者交流的能力。

“Daniel does not seek the limelight. But the culture within Alibaba is very much the smart boffin types. They do not always look like corporate titans.”

“張勇並不愛出風頭。不過阿里巴巴的內部文化也基本屬於技術牛人那類。他們並不總是像企業巨人。”