Can Alibaba get the magic back?

ALIBABA USED to be synonymous with the success of Chinese e-commerce. Lately the company has been synonymous with its woes. In 2021 it became the grimacing face of an official crackdown against China’s biggest technology firms, whose growing size and seeming social indispensability must have spooked the Communist Party. It was fined a record $2.8bn for monopolistic practices that, the government said, were hurting customers and merchants. Its co-founder, Jack Ma, disappeared into self-imposed exile. Rivals such as PDD, which began life as a group-buying platform, and ByteDance, which owns TikTok and its Chinese sister app, Douyin, proved better at catering to thrifty consumers and at adapting to new trends such as “social commerce”, which mixes shopping and showbusiness.