Author: Ralph Jennings / Source: Forbes
Nearly 400 startups showed this month at Asia’s biggest annual tech show in Taipei, up more than 100 from last year.
Anchoring their showroom at 2018 Computex Taipei was the Alibaba Entrepreneurs Fund, part of the China-based Alibaba e-commerce empire. The fund’s management carved out a mini amphitheater surrounded by some of the 23 prosperous companies from Taiwan and 16 from Hong Kong that it has supported since 2015 with a fund size of $461 million.The startup fund is growing businesses in Hong Kong and Taiwan with the ancillary benefit of showing them that mainland China can play nice, analysts suggest.
“Politics are always local, so boosting the tech and startup communities in Hong Kong and Taiwan is a win for everyone,” says Danny Levinson, past chairman of the American Chamber of Commerce Shanghai’s IT committee.
China has ruled Hong Kong since 1997 and claims sovereignty over Taiwan, which remains self-governed.
Alibaba joins other mainland China stakeholders in following Chinese President Xi Jinping’s “lead to jumpstart sectors in Taiwan and Hong Kong,” Levinson says.
The success of firms it has funded to date show how far Alibaba has gotten in both places. And the fund is far from used up.
China’s economic magnetism
Alibaba’s investments reveal an aspect of mainland China that Taiwanese and Hong Kong business people invariably like–its money and market potential.
“China is a very big market and people reckon that Alibaba has a lot, a big base there, so there’s a good chance they can…
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