Jack Ma Look-Alike (Photo : Channel-15TV/YouTube)
A year after Fan Xiaoqin became viral on Chinese social media because of his physical resemblance to Jack Ma, the founder of Alibaba Group Holdings, the boy from Yongfeng County, Jiangxi Province, became the talk of the country again.
It’s because Jack Ma, on the occasion of Alibaba Singles’ Day revenue hitting a record-high $17.7 billion, or 120.7 billion yuan, decided to pay it forward by funding the eight-year-old boy’s education all the way to college. He responded to the challenge made by netizens for the second-richest man in China to financially support the boy.
Fan Xiaoqin has not just the face of a young Jack Ma. He also comes with a lot of obstacles in his family life. His father lost a leg, his grandmother has Alzheimer’s disease and his mother has polio.
Sales for the Singles’ Day China online shopping holiday was 32 percent higher compared to 2015. However, the growth rate slowed down compared to last year’s 60 percent improvement from 2014 level of sales.
Nevertheless, Alibaba’s double 11 online shopping spree broke a lot of records such as $1 billion e-commerce transactions in just five minutes compared to eight minutes in 2015. By the first two hours, sales reached $7.2 billion, ZDNet reported.
Purchases made using mobile devices accounted for 82.07 percent of total volume, or 657 million delivery orders worth $14.6 billion, or 98.97 billion yuan. It is higher than the 467 million orders ordered through mobile devices in 2015 worth $9.8 billion.
Although the shopping holiday was originally intended for single Chinese men and women who wanted to spoil themselves in the absence of a loved one who would do that, Alibaba disclosed that there were also orders from 235 countries, with the top buyers coming from Japan, the U.S. and South Korea.
