Making entrepreneurship a familiar option for millions of Chinese is Jack Ma's lasting legacy

The Chinese count years in cycles of twelve. When a Chinese person enters an age that's a multiple of twelve, it is often viewed with great anticipation and anxiety as it said to signal a major event in that person's life.

So when legendary Chinese entrepreneur Jack Ma decided to hang up his boots last week at the age of 48, not too many were shocked or surprised. Ma, who stepped down as the chief executive of Taobao, but remains its chairman, was one of the early Chinese Internet entrepreneurs, with his first venture dating back to 1995, which was noticeably different from his peers.

The first wave of tech startups was pioneered by Chinese people who were educated or had studied in the United States. Robin Li of Baidu was an engineer at Infoseek, while Sohu's Charles Zhang was a graduate from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. These individuals brought with them the latest business models and technology, and more importantly, the Internet fever, which was sweeping across the US and the Europe in the 1990s.

Ma, despite being an English teacher, had never lived or worked in the US, when he started Taobao in 1999. He also chose to build Taobao in his hometown Hangzhou, far away from tech centers such as Beijing and Shenzhen. The equivalent would be like starting an Internet company in Miami, Florida.

Silicon Valley hits such as Youtube and Facebook are not accessible from within China, giving rise to their Chinese equivalents.

Taobao, on the other hand, had to compete head to head with eBay's Eachnet, which, at the time of Taobao's founding, enjoyed a first-mover advantage in China. Ma was undeterred, and the rest, as they say, is history.

The latest chapter in Taobao's amazing journey took place after it overtook tech behemoth Tencent as the most profitable Chinese Internet company. Rather than bask on the laurels, Ma chose this occasion to step aside, leaving a financially strong Taobao in the hands of "young people", who in his words, "are the future".

Incidentally, Ma is the first of his peers to retire. It is hardly the time to predict what his legacy will be. Taobao, besides being in excellent financial health, is also strategically well positioned, having given birth to Alipay, the default online payment system for Chinese consumers. Though there are a couple of newcomers on Taobao's turf, few seem to have a chance of dethroning it from its dominant position in China's e-commerce market.

With Taobao's success, Ma has single-handedly propelled Hangzhou as one of China's major tech hubs, rivaling Beijing. So much so that the city is often called the Silicon valley of China. In Hangzhou, Taobao's presence is obvious. Nearly 50 percent of the city's IT workers are Taobao employees. Of course, one great company alone cannot make a Silicon Valley, but given the right conditions, can make all the difference.

Silicon Valley had its "traitorous eight", the eight individuals who in 1957 founded Fairchild, the semiconductor company that spawned Silicon Valley's (before it was known as Silicon Valley) high-tech industry. Many of Silicon Valley's star companies (such as Intel and Apple) have a genealogy tracing back to Fairchild, whose founders and employees became investors and mentors to new generations of entrepreneurs.

Taobao, for all practical purposes, might prove to be Hangzhou's Fairchild. In many ways, the pre-Taobao Hangzhou already resembled the pre-Fairchild Silicon Valley. With nice weather, a charming old town and one top-notch university, Zhejiang University, nearby, Hangzhou is but one great company short of becoming the next Silicon Valley.

Ma's real legacy is likely to reach far beyond the city of Hangzhou, or even China's Internet industry. First with Alibaba, then with Taobao, Ma has always been a champion for the little guy. Alibaba largely served the small manufacturing business in China, making it easy for them to connect with overseas buyers. Taobao lowered the bar even further, enabling just about anyone to set up shop and start a small online business.

Quite a few of those early mom-and-pop Taobao stores have grown into multi-million-dollar businesses, even popular consumer brands. But the Taobao-inspired entrepreneurial spirit mostly takes place close to home.

At my alma mater, a young girl in her late 20s recently gave up her cushy job to set up her own business. In just a few months, she was up and running, with her Taobao business selling pet plants doing extremely well. Not satisfied with just being a re-seller on Taobao, her next step is to lease some land, grow her own supplies and scale up the business.

Just about everyone can tell similar stories of a friend, or a friend's friend, whose profitable Taobao site has enabled them to quit their day job, or at least provide a sizeable second income. Not every would-be entrepreneur has the know-how to start the next Google, but Taobao has made entrepreneurship a familiar option to the Chinese on a vast scale.

At 48, Ma has decades of productive life ahead of him. Even though he claimed that he would be practicing tai chi in his retirement, it is safe to say that a man of his energy, influence and vision will not sit idly by as China surges forward.

Tellingly, a retired Ma immediately took up a position with The Natural Conservancy, a global environmental organization. Toward the end of his tenure at Taobao, Ma was increasingly vocal about big issues such as environmental protection and food safety. Clearly Ma has on his mind fundamental challenges that he intends to tackle.

Though of slight built, Ma never backed away from big challenges. Instead, his moves were always well thought out. In an interview, Ma once told the story of his first appearance on TV. It was 1995. At the time, Ma was not a household name as he is today. He was a young entrepreneur with long hair, riding to work on his bicycle everyday working on this thing called the Internet, which few had heard of, and fewer understood.

As Ma was cycling home one night in 1995, he saw half a dozen men removing a manhole cover on the street. Remembering a recent news story about stolen manhole covers in the city, Ma took notice.

It was actually a setup by the Hangzhou TV station to see if passersby would take action to stop a criminal act. But Ma didn't know this. All he saw was some heavy-built men doing something wrong. He biked up and down the streets looking for the police or someone who would help him stop the offenders. Having found no one willing, he came back to the scene of the "crime", carefully poised himself, ready to run in case the guys attacked. Then he shouted, "Put it back!"

He did not have to run. Instead, he found himself on TV, admired for his conscience and courage.

The author is an independent commentator based in Beijing. He can be reached at fengwriting@gmail.com. The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.

(China Daily 05/17/2013 page9)