Generous Alibaba to scatter 0.9% of annual revenue over Southeast Asia to develop tech talent and infrastructure

Alibaba proclaimed at its Cloud Summit 2021 that it is ploughing $1bn into "Project AsiaForward", an initiative focused on expansion and development in Southeast Asia. The project includes training, partnerships with universities, and infrastructure development. The Chinese e-commerce company said today it hoped the cash pot …

[David 132]

Ingratiating themselves with the CCP by putting funding towards the new "make China appear friendly and cuddly" initiative?

I wonder if Indonesia and the Philippines know that expression about supping with the devil and using a long spoon?

[Anonymous Coward]

Most of the Philippines knows very well how evil China is.

Sadly most of the Philippines does not seem to include Rodrigo Duterte.

[Mark Exclamation]

Ah, the Chinese Communist Party continuing to take over the area by stealth, under the cover of one of their controlled companies, making them look charitable. Sorry, didn't fool me.

[deadlockvictim]

Article» Malaysia will get Alibaba's first international innovation centre where small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), startups, and developers will receive cloud technology and business leadership trainings, subsidized office space, mentorships, and venture capital networking.

This is not at all bad, even if you are working with Alibaba technologies. Do any of the tech giants in the West do this? Microsoft are pushing Azure very hard but starting out in Azure becomes pricey over time. I can't see Microsoft, Google or SAP offering venture capital and subsidised office space as a way of pushing their platform.

[Watty-7]

Erm…

The plural of training is training. (Paragraph 6).

[David 132]

Re: Erm…

Just a heads up... the El Reg team do prefer you to use the Corrections link ([e-mail]) at the bottom of the article to report stuff like that. They've been known to get quite tetchy about people who choose to make fun of their errors in the comment threads.

[anonymous boring coward]

Re: Erm…

So what. Let them get edgy.

[IGotOut]

Soft power.

The West and Russua have been doing it for a very long time.... China is quite new to the game and have been going to places ignored by the others.

If you are a West African country and the west have been going "sure we'll buy the goods we want, at rock bottom prices, but ONLY the goods we say you can sell". Then along comes China and says. "Here is a load of cash to build roads, hospitals, dams and power stations, just give us preference for all the juicy contracts and you can repay the loans much later", it's not hard to see the appeal.