Last year, China's online sales giant, Alibaba, said it could create 1 million jobs in the United States over the next five years by building a market where small American businesses could sell to the United States. burgeoning Chinese middle class.

Now, Alibaba's chairman, Jack Ma, said that trade between China and the United States is becoming more and more controversial, and that the promise can not be kept.

In an interview with Xinhua, the official news agency of the People's Republic of China, on Wednesday, Ma said the idea was based on a friendly United States-China partnership and rational trade relations.

"This premise does not exist anymore, so our promise can not be fulfilled," he said.

On Monday, the United States announced a new round of $ 250 billion worth of Chinese-made goods, after failing to reach an agreement with China on trade issues.

Business analysts and trade groups warn that tariffs and retaliatory tariffs imposed by China on US products will increase costs and hurt consumers in the long run.

When Ma made this statement in January 2017, he was not saying that Alibaba would engage 1 million Americans, but rather that small US companies would find enough customers in China to increase their sales, allowing them to Hire more workers. .

Ma said this week that Alibaba will not stop working to contribute to the healthy development of trade between the two countries and that trade between the two countries and in the world still needs to be improved.

"But trade is not a weapon and should not be used to trigger wars – it should be the engine of peace," he said.

Ma made the original promise in 2017 just before President Donald Trump's inauguration. At the time, Trump had complained about the trade imbalance between the United States and China.

In June of last year, Mr. Ma spoke at a conference in Alibaba in Detroit to convince small US companies that China was a market for them.

More: Donald Trump: "Super meeting" with Jack Ma from Alibaba

Cross-border shopping has been a promising growth area for online retailers, with Alibaba providing the knowledge and tools necessary to make it relatively simple.

China represents a potentially huge market for food products, cosmetics, vitamins and other products made in the United States. Chinese consumers do not trust the safety and wholesomeness of food grown in China and cosmetics made in China. They are particularly worried about anything that affects the skin of their children or their children. In China, American food and products have a very high reputation.

Ma announced earlier this month that it intends to resign as president of Alibaba, one of the largest e-commerce companies in the world, to focus on education.

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