Jack Ma, the founder of China’s tech giant Alibaba, on Tuesday met with President-elect Donald Trump to talk about creating one million jobs in the United States in five years.
The Labor Department of America’ data showed that the country’s non-farm employment was at 145.3 million, the New York Times reported in January.
“We specifically talked about supporting one million small businesses, especially in the Midwest of America. Small businesses on the platform selling products – agriculture products and American services – to China and Asia, because we’re pretty big in Asia,” Ma told reporters.
Trump said that they had a “great meeting” and that “Jack and I are going to do great things.”
However, Trump, someone who Chinese netizens say “runs the country on Twitter”, did not tweet about Jack Ma’s visit. In early December last year, Japanese business mogul Masayoshi Son met Trump, who posted on his Twitter account that “Masa (SoftBank) of Japan has agreed to invest USD 50 billion in the U.S toward businesses and 50,000 new jobs…”
Alibaba’s online shopping platform Taobao was back on the U.S. Trade Representative’s blacklist following complaints of the sale of counterfeit and pirated goods on Taobao in late December 2016.
In Weibo, China’s prominent social media platform, a news post about the meet-up of Jack Ma and Donald Trump saw 3,385 comments. AllChinaTech handpicked some of the sharpest of these comments.
Jack Ma and Trump talked about creating an astonishing one million new jobs. Remember, when Masayoshi Son met Trump, Son just promised 50,000 U.S. jobs.
— Woshi Erjiefu
Trump did not seem happy with the proposal. In his eyes, job opportunities are employment relations with payrolls involved. Buying hamburgers from McDonald’s or delivering hamburgers for it, does not necessarily equate to creating jobs for people working at McDonald’s. Trump might be disappointed. He may think, “selling goods in America? We have Amazon. You are stealing jobs.”
— Peng Zhou
Jack Ma is a businessman. And so is Trump. Jack Ma hopes Alibaba will expand, serving small and medium sized enterprises around the world. This indirectly will boost job opportunities in America.
—Fuhua Wei Xuwang
(Top photo from Business Insider)