Alibaba is just the beginning

As Alibaba founder Jack Ma kicked off the road show to promote his company's shares in advance of its initial public offering (IPO), an investment manager was asked over turkey sandwiches at New York's posh Waldorf Astoria Hotel if he had learned anything new.

The answer was a clear "no." The investor, like many others, wanted answers to two questions: What strategy would Alibaba use in pursuit of global growth? And how transparent will the company be, for example when it comes to hiring people for senior management roles?

At any rate, self-made billionaire Jack Ma made at least one thing clear: The proceeds from the IPO - and it will be gigantic - would be invested in Alibaba's branches in the US and Europe.

Given that Alibaba has managed to squeeze eBay out of the Chinese market altogether - a market once dominated by the American tech giant - Ma's plans sounded rather like a threat. And that is exactly how it should be understood by Alibaba's competitors - platforms like eBay or Amazon - and in a wider sense, by Europe, which is years behind the state of the art in online business.

The rise and rise of China

Even Silicon Valley, for decades the incubator of world-class IT companies, could be facing the dawn of a new age - an age in which Chinese firms set the pace of innovation.

Alibaba's IPO at the New York Stock Exchange on Wall Street is merely a precursor. Since Beijing gave the green light for the partial privatization of state-owned companies, the private sector has increasingly turned to capital markets to raise fresh funds. The three largest IPOs in history, prior to Alibaba's, were those of three Chinese banks. Alibaba's will be the biggest yet - and its market capitalization will be bigger than that of Facebook, Visa or General Motors.

Other major Chinese players are also gearing up for their own IPO launches, although this won't necessarily happen on Wall Street. China Re, the re-insurance firm, or Xiaomi, a smartphone maker aiming to become China's answer to Apple - manifestations of a shift in the global economy's center of gravity from West to East. Alibaba's IPO is a milestone in China's climb toward becoming the largest economy in the world.

Everything has its price

None of this is unfolding without risk. Alibaba is the best example. The holding company governs an extremely complex conglomerate from its registered base in the Caribbean. Only 12 percent of the shares will be traded publicly. Shareholders will scarcely have any voice; control will stay with the leadership clique around Jack Ma.

And then there's China's powerful Communist Party that sets the rules for Chinese businesses - and also changes them, sometimes abruptly.

Twenty-five Chinese companies are listed on Germany's leading stock market in Frankfurt, where they are being viewed with some skepticism ever since the CEO of Chinese shoemaker Ultrasonic disappeared along with the company checkbook. Investors were left in the cold. The disappearance was by no means unprecedented.

But all that doesn't seem to interest investors, who are lining up for Alibaba's IPO and other Chinese deals. No wonder: Markets are flooded with money in search of an attractive investment. And Alibaba looks attractive enough. After all, a company that almost entirely dominates e-commerce in the world's second-largest Internet market must be doing something right.