《经济学人》的编辑哲学和秘密是什么？它隐藏在伦敦圣詹姆斯公园后面，夹杂于私人俱乐部云集的Pall Mall和专卖绅士服饰用品Jermynst间的编辑总部，是如何决定每期的封面故事和定稿的呢？英国《经济学人》中文版(EconomistChinese.com)将告诉你真相，并及时更新和翻译其精彩文章。

    中国以及互联网这两个概念都习惯于钻进投资者的脑中，现在这两个令人陶醉的特质集中体现在一间公司上，两种泡沫产生叠加效应，那就是阿里巴巴。

     阿里巴巴号称是世界最收欢迎的B2B网络平台，通过这个平台，外国买家能找到中国供应商，中国公司之间也可以互相找到商机。但就在上周，该公司准备在香港上市，计划售出19%的股份，以达到融资17亿美金的目标。如果这一融资目标实现，该公司的市值将达到90亿美金，相当于其每年利润的100倍。

    该公司最大的财富也许是他的创始人马云，马云在公众眼中是个有魅力善言辞并懂得利用媒体的人，但马云在2005年将阿里巴巴40%的股份卖给雅虎之后，个人仅持有5%的股份，极容易丧失对公司的实际控制权。

    在阿里巴巴网站上做生意的商人们，仍然饱受产品质量，安全和假冒伪劣的困扰。他们不得不做大量的线下工作，来确保网站另一端发布信息的供应商是可信赖的。像其他网站一样，阿里巴巴没有办法解决这一中国互联网交易的固有缺陷。此外，阿里集团其他一些具有利润前景的资产，如帮助客户管理货源、库存、顾客等信息的阿里软件，并不在本次香港市场交易的范畴中。

    这一切，足以让投资者感到疑惑，阿里本次融资的股价与其实际价值，真的相配吗？

    英文原文:

Alibaba
Magic-carpet ride
Oct 25th 2007 | HONG KONG
From The Economist print editionThe China bubble bumps into the dotcom bubble

BOTH China and the internet have a habit of going to the heads of investors. So perhaps it was inevitable that these two intoxicants would be combined in a single company. Alibaba is the world's most popular business-to-business (B2B) online marketplace. Its two best-known sites allow foreign buyers to find Chinese suppliers, and Chinese companies to trade with each other. Now the company is eager to trade a bit of itself. This week it priced its public offering on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. Up to 19% of its shares will be quoted on November 6th.

Huge demand pushed up the pricing of the deal by a third. The company now hopes to raise $1.7 billion, which would value it at $9 billion, or more than 100 times this year's earnings. The firm's biggest asset is perhaps its founder, Jack Ma. Mr Ma is everything that most Chinese entrepreneurs are not. Charismatic, plain-spoken and accessible to the press, he has parlayed a bold idea, a huge marketing budget and laudatory clippings into a business that has a large following and an eye-popping valuation.

Does Alibaba merit its price? If it could smooth all the pitfalls of Chinese procurement, it would deserve even more. But no website can do that. Fears about quality, safety and counterfeiting still worry wholesale buyers, who have to do a lot of offline work to satisfy themselves that a supplier is capable and trustworthy. As a result, once buyers have found a supplier they like, they tend to stick with it, rather than searching again when they have a new order to place. Firms involved in Chinese supply-chain management were once terrified by the idea of Alibaba. But their concern has faded as the demand for hands-on procurement has grown.

Alibaba hopes its position as the leading marketplace will allow it to sell more lucrative services on the side. Its members can subscribe to software, known as Alisoft, which handles their finances, inventories and customer information. But Alisoft is not included in the Hong Kong offering. Investors do not seem to care. The one product Alibaba can unquestionably shift at the moment is its own shares.