In Jack Ma’s speech at the Computing Conference 2017, which was held at the Yunqi Town International Exhibition Center in Hangzhou, the city where Alibaba is based, he stressed that Alibaba’s technology has been developed to serve the country and the society, and that it will also play an important role in the country’s and the society’s future. 

“Alibaba is no longer an ordinary commercial company. We have a great responsibility for our country and for the times we live in. I said to my people at Alibaba ten years ago, that it had nothing to do with us if the China's e-commerce develops well; but it would be our problem if Chinese e-commerce is less-developed. Because we had 90 percent of China's e-commerce talents in the company at that time, and that could have negative effects for the national economic development if we didn’t recognise our responsibility and fail to act upon it.

In the end, I think Alibaba must be a company that works on the creation of the future of our country and our society.

We must be an innovative company. Rather than focusing on the innovation for our company, we're going to be the engine of the national innovation. We must be a company of the century. We must be a global company, and we shall represent the young people of this era. I haven’t changed this view for a decade. If you think about it in this way, you will understand our ambition which makes our company different from the other companies.

Some people challenge us by saying that Alibaba is everywhere, and Alibaba wants to be the big boss of the whole global e-commerce market. However, I don’t think Alibaba should be only an e-commerce company itself, but rather an innovative engine of our country, our society as well as the world. 

Alibaba’s technology has no boundary limits globally, just as the electricity has no boundary lines in the world. For example, you can't say that the electricity can be used in the technology industry, but can’t be used in the agricultures. The internet technology needs to be applied to all the industries. And Alibaba must be one of the companies doing exactly that.”