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Why a Chinese Company Is the Biggest IPO Ever In the US
An anonymous reader writes The Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba has made headlines lately in US financial news. At the closing of its Initial Public Offering (IPO) on Friday, it had raised $21.8 billion on the New York Stock Exchange, larger even than Visa's ($17.9 billion), Facebook's ($16 billion), and General Motors ($15.8 billion) IPOs. Some critics do say that Alibaba's share price will plummet from its current value of $93.60 in the same way that Facebook's and Twitter's plummeted dramatically after initial offerings. Before we speculate, however, we should take note of what Alibaba is exactly. Beyond the likes of Amazon and eBay, Alibaba apparently links average consumers directly to manufacturers, which is handy for an economy ripe for change. Approximately half of Alibaba's shares "were sold to 25 investment firms", and "most of the shares went to US investors."
Alibaba's AliExpress store is ripe with fakes
I think Alibaba is a stupid namr.
The first thing I think of is "Alibaba and the 40 thieves"
Because it could enlist in the US without changing it's management structure. The US financial regulations don't hinder the execution of family values.
Hooray, getting more plastic knockoff versions of things, produced by slaves (hint: Communism doesn't treat people kindly), with zero regard for the environment, and shipped halfway across the planet.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
1) US prints money and invests in China
2) China builds stuff
3) US buys stuff.
4) China buys US stocks/bonds/securities.
5) US invests in China - stock
GOTO #2
Profits are somewhere in there. Eventually the banks will figure out that you can just bounce between #4 & #5. Profits come with bailouts.
I know that this is a hard choice (especially since I heard Alibaba has soared by 38% in its first day) but please consider the following:
About 5 years ago I stopped investing in Chinese companies. Why? Because I didn't want to support even indirectly a regime that, without apology, oppressed Tibet and supported the despotic regime of North Korea. I hold them largely responsible for sacrificing millions of my long-separated brothers (yes, I'm ethnic Korean) through starvation and torture simply to keep a "buffer state" in between them and the "capitalist" (ha ha, what irony) South Korea and U.S.
My stance was only hardened by their support, for purely geopolitical/economic considerations (OIL), of Syria and Iran (and, I think Libya). They and Russia have kept those regimes propped up and have made the tragedies in the Middle East even worse (of course America started it but at least we know now that most of us were idiots to be led by one). That's not to mention the authoritarian and despotic regimes that the Chinese GOVERNMENT is supporting in Africa purely for their resources.
Look, I know the West (and especially the U.S.) have done a LOT of bad things but the Chinese government doesn't even make a pretense of things like human rights, even in their own country. As I've said, they've been willing to sacrifice millions for a modicum of security (they could've asked the U.S. and S. Korea if, in return for not letting the Kims return to North Korea from one of their trips to China, we would promise not to put American troops north of the 38th parallel. As if S. Korea would even want American troops on the peninsula once the threat was gone). Now, living in S.E. Asia, I see firsthand how the Chinese government with its growing power is throwing away treaties and agreements it has signed in order to bully the Vietnamese and Philippines with their ridiculous "cow tongue" shaped demarcation of the seas. They are returning to 19th century "gunboat" diplomacy in the 21 century world.
I fear that as China grows ever stronger, they will continue to discard previous commitments to peace and will literally force their will upon the world. Is that what you want to support? I'm a realist, and I love my gadgets and my improved standard of living brought on by the flood of low-cost Chinese products (often produced with stolen patents and technologies but that's another story) and I'm not quite ready to live without. However, when there's a choice, when you can purchase something that is identical (hopefully) in every way including price to another but one is made in China and one was made in Sweden(?), I hope you'll make the same choice I do.
If the Chinese government, not the U.S. government had the power the NSA has; would any of us have any protection at all? Think of what kind of world that would be to live in. (That's what 1.2 billion people ARE living in).
(If you're wondering why I'm advocating not buying/investing in China and hurting Chinese citizens as opposed to just their government, remember that the world boycotted South Africa during their Apartheid regime even though it undoubtedly hurt many whites and blacks who were good people. And it worked.)
Why a Chinese ebay full of scams, counterfeit products, and cheap knock offs?
The reason Alibaba will take over from Amazon and Ebay is simple. Two things.
First, scale. It moves more product than Amazon and Ebay COMBINED, and that's before even entering the US market. The network effect will dominate.
Second the vast majority of what Amazon and (especially!) Ebay sells is made in factories in China anyway. Alibaba will allow cheaper prices for the same products without having to go through the middlemen and let Ama/Eba skim off profits in the middle.
If i can buy a part directly from the manufacturer in China for $3.99, I'm not going to pay $11.99 for Amazon to deliver it to me or even $5.99 for an Ebay reseller.
Alibaba will have a price advantage on the other big players, and that's what'll matter in the end.
I sure wouldn't be wanting to hang onto Amazon or Ebay stock right now (assuming either have stock, sorry I don't keep track of things like that).
Approximately half of Alibaba's shares "were sold to 25 investment firms", and "most of the shares went to US investors."
I wanted to learn more about it and I came across this on Yahoo! Finance: Our parent company Yahoo (YHOO) has a 22.5% stake in Alibaba and will sell roughly $8 billion in shares today, leaving it with a 16.3% stake.
Which brought up a lot of things.
So, Yahoo! is speculating in the stock market now? Or venture capital? Well, they might as well since their Internet business is for shit.
I knew what Alibaba was but can a peon like me get in on the IPO and made the easy money? Nope. I don't know the right people.
A Chinese company on the NYSE? So, I guess they are going to meet all the reporting requirements and auditing? A Chinese company? My the World has changed in the last few years! (The simplicity of Chinese accounting scandals) Good luck with that!
"Investing" in Bitcoins doesn't look so crazy anymore.
> Some critics do say that Alibaba's share price will plummet from its current value of $93.60 in the same way that Facebook's and Twitter's plummeted
The vast majority of IPOs are lower in price 6 months after the issue date. Usually what happens is that company owners have some restrictions on when they can start selling stock - and those are typically 6 months or so. So on the day of initial sale supply is very constrained. Later a lot more shares flood onto the market.
For example Facebook went from $38 to $19.
Purchasing IPOs on day of issuance is a sucker move.
It's a Chinese company located in China, and most of its business and customers are in China. So why is it doing its IPO on the US stock market?
Shouldn't NYSE/Nazdaq disallow this? SEC and FTC have no jurisdiction in China or anywhere else outside the USA. If a chinese company listed on NYSE did fraudulent accounting or whatever, SEC can't do jack shit about it.
The whole thing seems like a clever scheme by Chinese companies and Goldman Sachs to sucker money out of U.S. investors.
Hello, i know you are scared about China.
but hey, don't forget the deb's China own you. and the 400KM gas contract with Russia whithout dollar money for 40 years.
so, please, relax
ahh, add the Nicaragua canal project
Shares go to Alibaba Holdings Group Limited in the Cayman Islands. The contracts enabling proxy investment by Americans (otherwise illegal in China) have never been upheld in a Chinese court of law. Not something I would want as a long term investment.
The less you understand the company, the more attractive it is. I suspect the opacity of its operations are a draw.
I remember the tech bubble: "Two guys with a server and a dream" could make millions (on paper). If they cashed out quickly enough, they could turn it into currency.
China has arguably moved from communism to fascism and as Mussolini stated "Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power." One can see many of the tenants of an oligarch's paradise: a single party police/surveillance state, labor unions are outlawed, environmental regulations are practically non-existent, imminent domain is abused, and there is an income inequality that even surpasses the US. Capitalism has chosen the most profitable government model and is hedging their investments on it. China is already the largest trading nation and is expected to soon surpass the US as the largest economic power. In the 1930's many American investors flocked to the economic growth in fascist germany. and Prescott Bush(perhaps indirectly) come to mind. Given the current political climate in the US perhaps there may be another Business Plot in our generation.
I imagine many of these large investment firms have direct or indirect access to zero percent federal reserve loans (going on six years with no end in sight) and they would be foolish not to speculate on Alibaba with house money.
If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be-T J
The IPO also wasted nearly $10B considering that the issue price was $68 and it started trading at $95. I just can't understand the logic behind the IPO mechanism. The purpose of an IPO is to raise as much capital as possible for a company to enable it to grow. However, 41% of the IPO value didn't go to the company; it went to lottery-winning middle men who were given shares for $68 and immediately flipped them to the open market.
An IPO should operate like a Dutch auction, with company having a trading account loaded with all of the IPO shares and starting sale for at a high valuation like $200 and then ticking down 1% every minute that "too few" shares are sold. This maximizes the haul for the IPO company by not squandering billions of dollars on bank insiders.
I was going to say that China screws foreigners. Companies that want to do business in China have to bribe the local officials, and trade away intellectual property. The government will make up regulations that favor local manufacturers. In addition, China has lots of spies steal foreign technology.
.
It is the same reason that Hollywood always touts dollar amount of ticket sales and not the number of tickets sold. With the ever increasing ticket prices, ticket sales will always increase, even if the number of ticket sales remains the same. If you take into account inflation, Gone With The Wind (1939) is the largest grossing movie.
IPOs are subject to a similar inflationary hype. This is the same Wall Street that crashed the world economy a few years back. They want to make it appear as if everyone is farting sunshine and rainbows so Main Street will start sending money to Wall Street once again.
Be afraid, be very afraid.
If you haven't noticed, a) so-called U.S. companies are bailing on their hypothetical obligation to support the budget of Republic by changing their mailing addresses, and b) The U.S. is not a democracy. It's an oligopoly, ruled by those with enough money to retain the best representatives that propodanda can buy, and c) China is only playing catch-up in the global framework of finance and currency manipulation now that they're entrepreneurs are supported by the same type of central bank and expansionist policies the west had used to promote economic growth as a primary mission.
Linking China to the west has been a mission of western diplomacy since Marco Polo dreamt of the IMF and World Bank. You can't actually believe that you can spend a âuro or a US$ without supporting the underlying goals of the governments that create them, can you?
Nonparticipation, by definition, accomplishes nothing. All you are advocating is nationalisn. Another ill-conceived philosophical front for uncritical thinking. Changing the world requires being there.
It really seems like pretty much any tech IPO is going to be huge, even though history shows that most of the recent ones (last 20 years) are bad investments. Is Wall Street really just packing so much extra cash that they have nothing better to invest in than a Chinese company with no actual presence in the US? This whole thing just seems crazy to me.
use our stock exchange? maybe they should go back to fucking china and hang out on the chinese stock exchange.
And the Chinese government is a totalitarian government so the Republicans love them. That is why they are flooding China with so much money. They have the government and economny that the Republicans want to shove down our throats here. They hate freedom so they love this hateful company that makes children work for sixteen hours a day.
People will flock to buy stuff and invest in this company which markets and sells goods manufactured almost exclusively in China and then have the nerve to complain about the US foreign trade deficit. We the stupid, blind and thoughtless Americans, brought it upon ourselves, and continue to do so, all the while blaming it on Obama, Congress or whatever other fool is in office. We get what we deserve I guess...
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
I seldom post but read regularly - great and varied source of mat'l on many different subjects. This series of posts seemed to score lower than most, at least subjectively from my POV and particularly where critical posts were being made and often by foreign nationals. Perhaps I'm just being too touchy-freely or perhaps those who make these assessments have a POV quite different from mine. I certainly will cop to the former at times, but this thread felting jarring in that respect - and for the for the record, this isn't about the great /. snark, which is awfully damned good! :-)
QRWW
On the other hand who owns Alibaba's 120 billion? Americans now.
US investors don't own Alibaba, the Chinese retail giant. Chinese law doesn't allow foreigners to own a Chinese strategic asset. What US investors are buying is interest in a Cayman Island “variable-interest entity”. Stockholders won't have the usual influence on corporate governance or management.
http://www.marketwatch.com/sto...
What a racist comment. You must be a Republican
I am a Chinese. I was born in China but has been an American for almost 4 decades
I can tell you one thing about America --- The average Democrats are more racist than the average Republicans
The Republicans might be more conservatives but they are also pragmatic. On the other hand the Democrats may call themselves "liberals" but their so-called "liberalism" is laced with a very strong anti-Chinese sentiment
The perfect example is Hillary Clinton - that broad is an all-out anti-Chinese racist --- even when she was still the "First Lady" her first visit to China (attending a "women conference" in Beijing, back in the mid 1990's) her first speech (she gave a keynote speech for that conference) was lambasting the Chinese people, the host of the conference, with all the vile racist diatribe she could find
I am not saying that there are no racist in the Republican camp, but if compare to those from the Donkey party, there are fewer racist Elephants
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
will be the biggest IPO ever in the US and prove the SEC and the rest of the goverment is a sham.
Yes, there are a LOT of thieves, in my past experience up to 10% of transactions were deliberately misleading or outright fraudulent in what they sent.. or didn't send. But Alibaba has done a lot better progressively over the last 2-3 years to weed them out. Their customer service and escrow functionality has improved a great deal too. And the simple fact is, there are a LOT of small retailers who are honest, who do want to maintain good reputations and most important, have unique and low-priced products.
But fundamentally, Alibaba will never truly 'beat' Amazon mainly because of the 'customer service' aspect. Ebay I think can and will be beaten, and richly deserves to die since a huge percentage of its auctions are just spam from Alibaba members these days anyways, and of course Paypal.. Alibaba and Ebay are the retail equivalent of low-cost airlines; they merely skim a margin off the top of a transaction by providing the marketplace and some measure of common financial interface. But Amazon still maintains (at some level) a fig-leaf of SERVICE and brokerage: next-day shipping for many products, exclusives and their own curated services.
Amazon is a warehouse; Alibaba is the guy in the alley with a truck. If you're OK with the fact you'll have to carry that new sofa home strapped to the back of your car and it might not be quite the shade of red you were promised but you still saved $300, then by all means buy from Alibaba.
As Chinese economy grows, so does its middle class. As its middle class grows, it demands more democratic reforms and more government responsibility - ultimately, a way to better China, for both its people and its neighbors.
That was the Nixon/Kissinger theory of the 1960s/70s. It was used to cut China all sort of political and economic slack. It was proven wrong by the 1989 Tiananmen Square Massacre.
So if you want a better China, you should do the exact opposite of what you're doing.
No. If you want a better China then the US should treat China as China treats the US. Have reciprocal economic and trade policies, punitive measures for egregious behavior, ... No more cutting them slack hoping they will moderate over time, no more treating them like they are an impoverished developing nation, ... To create an environment where only respect for human rights and the rule of law is necessary. Free trade requires that trade also be fair.
And before someone starts with all the US debt they own. They need those US bonds to manipulate their currency to create a huge built-in discount for Chinese goods and services. To stop buying US bonds, or to sell their currently held bonds, would cause their currency to rise. Their artificially low currency is the real key to their global success, not low wages. They are as dependent on their US bonds as we are.
Alibaba actually has revenue, as opposed to Facebook and Twitter's future-revenue based on the number of people visit their website.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
That was the Nixon/Kissinger theory of the 1960s/70s. It was used to cut China all sort of political and economic slack. It was proven wrong by the 1989 Tiananmen Square Massacre.
Was it, though? China circa 1960s/70s was a totalitarian dictatorship where Tiananmen square was an impossibility simply because any dissent would be crushed long before it would get to mass protest stage, and the yearly number of victims was far greater, too. Compared to China after Tiananmen, the latter is far more liberal. It's even more liberal today.
If you want a better China then the US should treat China as China treats the US. Have reciprocal economic and trade policies, punitive measures for egregious behavior, ... No more cutting them slack hoping they will moderate over time, no more treating them like they are an impoverished developing nation,
I did not suggest doing such a thing. The best thing you can do is just trade (and yes, this doesn't preclude e.g. tariffs to even out the price of labor differences, environmental concerns etc).
Business first, politics second.
China rather want Amazon and eBay than Alibaba.Because Amazon and eBay sells more goods than Alibaba.
I've used aliexpress.com (the consumer site for alibaba). It's incredibly scammy.
The prices are not that different to those offered by ebay sellers (usually the same). Ebay accepts Paypal, Aliexpress doesn't. Although they have an ill reputed escrow service.
Aliexpress selers have a lot of things you can't buy on ebay. It's great for buying knockoffs. I used it to be Gameboy and NES clone.
It's very popular with women, who use it to buy cosmetics at very low prices (probably fake brands).
So the US banks will con their customers. Alibaba is not worth the 22 billion $ they're asking for. Maybe half of that is the right value.
I pity the suckers that will fall for this incredible scam.
with 51% ownership being a Chinese company, with all IP, be it source code trees, chemical processes, and so on all belong to the PRC
run a third shift and sell what was developed locally and on gray markerts for cheap.
You do realize that statement A and statement B are incompatible business strategies?
What's the value of IP if you're shipping out knock-offs at the same time?
And why would you need the IP if all you're gonna do with it is produce knock-offs? You can't do it without the IP?
Further more, who is going to buy your IP if it comes with a potential "Chinese prison for 20 years" OR a lawsuit due to such IP piracy?
What court will judge in your favor if someone infringes on the IP acquired in such a way?
Who would do ANY KIND of business with you after that?
What you are describing would the equivalent of them stealing Windows code from Microsoft, then while producing Windows DVDs (or whatever) for Microsoft, re-branding it as Doors and selling it "on gray markets", while at the same time going around offering to sell people the property rights to the code as if it is worth anything.
Seriously, are you retarded? Is that your problem? You do know this is the internet, right?
Where everyone can see that you are full of shit with just a click or two?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
http://www.nytimes.com/1995/09...
The jealousy and hate of Chinese success is pooring in huge flows in this tread. Where is all the scientific thinking and mathematical objectivity now?
incorrect: http://www.theverge.com/2014/5/7/5690596/meet-alibaba-the-ecommerce-giant-with-more-sales-than-amazon-and-ebay
America is where you go to sell stocks, easiest place to to part people from their money.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
Yes and no. The communist party is just flip-flopping between a bit of liberalization and then oppression. When the party needs money, they liberalize a bit. When they have enough, they oppress so as to prevent the growing middle class from threatening their authority. We can attest here in Hong Kong with the escalating prosections of activists by our government recently. The communist party is now in a house full of money and they can finally kill the noisy goose that used to be the only one that lay gold eggs.
An internet company doesn't need to be a US company to be the largest in the world. Alibaba is the world's largest e-commerce site and it almost totally ignores US market. China is the world largest market now.
1. Alibaba mainly operates around the globe, mainly China, igoring US. That is why most of the people in US don't know about this site.
2. Alibaba's main income comes from around the globe - except from US.
3. Alibaba's IPO is the biggest IPO in NYSE history - from a company with almost zero presence in US.
4. Alibaba itself doesn't need money from IPO -- it's annual net profit is already 4B and growing, this IPO only raises 20B for them. Yes this IPO will for sure raise brand recognition for Alibaba in US, but who cares? Alibaba has already become the biggest e-commerce site globally, how much more would the US market help out?
5. Why it needs to IPO? Alibaba wants to payback Yahoo/Softbank (it's early investors) and get rid of them; Yahoo/Softbank ask Alibaba to list on an offshore exchange (NY/LN/HK) so that they can cash out. Both Yahoo/Softbank reneged - Softbank refused to sell a single share, Marissa Meyer managed to sell a lot less than Yahoo committed to.
6. Alibaba chose NYSE to list, this is a big favor to US, NYC, and NYSE. London is a viable option. HK could do too. But with Goldman etc. as investors, they drag Alibaba to list in US. You guys should be thankful to Wall St. Why would a company with almost zero relation to US report humongous profit to NYSE, every quarter?
7. Yes Amazon has operations in China, but Amazon is an underdog in e-commerce sector overthere, behind Taobao/JD/DangDang.
8. With the pervasive presence of Alibaba in China, Alibaba's China income growth rate is for sure in line with China's GDP growth rate, which is at least 7.5%. Which means the profit/roi is likely 7.5%. Trust Chinses govt data/prediction, they have 30 year proven track record in developing economy.
China could easily become an aggressor much the same way Russia is with the Ukraine.
Or the way the US is/was with Afghanistan, Libya, Iraq, Vietnam, Panama, Cuba (Bay of Pigs), etc. Furthermore have you forgotten how the US was founded? (Hint, it wasn't populated with white people 200 years ago.) Have you forgotten the number of dictators that the US has installed and supported including but not limited to Saddam Hussein, Francisco Franco, Hosni Mubarak, Augusto Pinochet and many many more.
Let's not pretend the US has been some paragon of virtue over the years, shall we?
If China were to get in a war with Japan over Japan's northern islands, the share value of these companies could evaporate overnight.
If that happens, the value of a few companies should frankly be the least of your concerns. I'd be a lot more concerned about WWIII starting.
As much as investing in BRICs is tempting, it can not be forgotten that most of these places are not democracies.
Precisely half of the BRIC countries are democracies, specifically Brazil and India. Russia ostensibly is a democracy though in reality not so much these days. China is the only one that is not a democracy. Some people include Indonesia (BRIIC) which is among the most populous countries in the world (currently #4) and it too is a democracy.
Doesn' matter in regards to what he wrote though. Hurt Alibaba and you still hurt the American investors regardless of the company structure.
First, scale. It moves more product than Amazon and Ebay COMBINED, and that's before even entering the US market. The network effect will dominate.
That doesn't mean a damn thing once a company leaves their home country. Alibaba dominating in China doesn't mean they are assured of any kind of success on the other side of the Pacific. There are innumerable examples of companies that dominate their home markets that struggle in new markets including Walmart, Google, eBay and others. Alibaba might be a great investment and dominate the Chinese market but it isn't remotely certain they will be anywhere near as successful outside of China.
Second the vast majority of what Amazon and (especially!) Ebay sells is made in factories in China anyway.
Demonstrably not true. Supply chains are a lot more complicated than "made in China" and people greatly overestimate the amount of stuff that is actually made in China. A lot of stuff is made in China but far more is not. China produces about 18-19% of the worlds exports by dollar value. Furthermore people greatly underestimate the amount of stuff that is manufactured domestically. The US also produces somewhere around 18% of the worlds exports.
Alibaba will allow cheaper prices for the same products without having to go through the middlemen and let Ama/Eba skim off profits in the middle.
You're presuming Amazon and Ebay provide no value. I buy a lot through Amazon because their delivery is second to none and their prices are generally reasonable. There is nothing wrong with buying through a middleman if they actually add value and many do. I buy electronic components through distributors on a daily basis for my day job and there is a huge amount of value in that. You buy toilet paper from your local grocery store because the convenience is worth the markup. The internet has flattened the supply chain somewhat but don't think for a moment that there is no need for middle men anymore.
If i can buy a part directly from the manufacturer in China for $3.99, I'm not going to pay $11.99 for Amazon to deliver it to me or even $5.99 for an Ebay reseller.
Sure you will because you want it TOMORROW. You want it from a source you trust. You want the ability to return it and be assured of a refund. You also are conveniently forgetting freight costs which are extremely NOT trivial. I run a manufacturing company that buys parts from around the globe. I buy a lot of stuff including a lot of parts that originate in China, Japan, Germany and other places. We deal with distributors all the time because they add value, shorten lead times, reduce risk and that has real value. Am I supposed to tell a customer that they will have to wait 12-16 weeks for a part (a very typical lead time from China) because I want to source it from some manufacturer I've never heard of in China? Better be buying a LOT of product and be willing to take a lot of inventory risk if you want to do that. It comes by boat unless you want to pay some outrageous markups on airfare.
I've tried. Not very satisfying. Money doesn't compensate, I'm afraid.
The entire deal reeks. A holding company in the Caymens associated with a company in a foreign land with profits which may or may not meet accounting standards. The only people dumb enough to take that play would those who cant lose, like banks.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
Dude, Wall St operates on much much more data than you do.
And no, no ,no, Americans are not the sole "investors". There are a lot of Chinese stock buyers for Alibaba -- Gasp! shock! shock! shock! Chinese can buy stocks directly on NYSE? Stop them from buying, it is OUR exchange!
Wall St (esp. YOUR pension funds) knows what is a reliable income source, much better than you do.
funny shit.
This can not be said too much or too often.
Ohhhhhh yeah it's going to sink a bit. Half the sellers are criminal scammers or have no English support whatsoever despite making millions. Chinese labor is going up so manufacturing prices are looking better in the US and every Chinese business owner absolutely hates Alibaba. So "the price might drop"? Yeah, I think that's a category 5 shitstorm blowing in actually. Anyone stupid enough to invest in them will lose their ass.
"... even than Visa's ($17.9 billion), Facebook's ($16 billion), and General Motors ($15.8 billion)"
A payment method, a time waster and a 'products that kill you' company.
Here you can actually buy stuff, and lots of it has free shipping, may it be to Ouagadougou, Timbuktu or Buttfuck, Idaho.
You know, useful.
Then you should advocate not buying anything from USA: I lost count how many countries has been overthrown by US(Iran, Iraq, Chile, ...). Maybe you can educate the number of death caused by US actions massively > all dictators of the world combined.
Compared to China after Tiananmen, the latter is far more liberal. It's even more liberal today.
China is less liberal after Tiananmen. Before Tiananmen they had a vibrant growing peaceful democracy movement. A movement that asked not for an end to the communist party, but for the communist party to reform itself, in particular with respect to corruption. Which the communist party responded to with a massacre.
Today when a worker loses a hand in an industrial accident the company says he must have violated a company safety regulation so they are not at fault and not responsible for his care. When the attorney for the worker takes the company to court over its treatment of the worker the attorney is beaten in the middle of the night by the local police. That is the reality of Chinese liberalism today.
You can be as liberal as the communist party allows you to be.
Ali is a big company when it IPO in US, while most US IPO's are for less matured companies. It's like sending a grade 6 kid into kindergarten. Of course it is big.
The main reason I buy from AliExpress is the price, of course. This is partly because the products are cheap but also a lot to do with the free shipping. For example, I bought 6 hall effect sensors for $2, shipped. I live in a rural location and it would cost me about $15 in fuel to drive to town and buy a hall effect sensor for $10. I saved $$$ and got 5 spares to boot.
So I asked the rural mail guy who delivered my product to my door how on earth a $2 item can be delivered for free. He told me that our postal company sends the bill to China for reimbursement. Not only that, he gets paid something like $1 for each item he delivers that needs signing for.
The Chinese goverment is paying for your free dleivery. I say, make the most of it while it lasts during this market buildup period. Surely they cannot afford to continue paying for free shipping on $2 items forever.
You mean, don't support China because they helped overthrown a dictator in Tibet? i.e. the country was being ruled by a theocracy. If you did any proper investigation of how common Tibetans were treated by the ruling class at the time, you wouldn't be so quick to condemn China. I don't think China invading Tibet was right, but it's the lesser of the 2 evils (communism vs theocracy).
You're Korean right, well you know that Koreans descended from the Chinese race right? So you're actually Chinese. I mean seriously you can't actually believe you're a separate race. I look forward to the day the great motherland reunites all of it vassals under one roof.