“It is estimated that [sovereign funds] have $30 trillion under management, so they have enormous power in the capital markets… that's why it is important for the capital markets to get to understand this group.”
Winston Ma is an investor, attorney, author, and adjunct professor in the global digital economy. He is one of a small number of native Chinese who have worked as investment professionals and practicing capital markets attorneys in both the United States and China. Most recently, he was Managing Director and Head of North America Office for China Investment Corporation (CIC), China’s sovereign wealth fund, for 10 years. Prior to that, Ma served as the deputy head of equity capital markets at Barclays Capital, a vice president at J.P. Morgan investment banking, and a corporate lawyer at Davis Polk & Wardwell LLP.
Hedge funds and asset managers typically get most of the spotlight from the media when it comes to large investment groups. In reality, sovereign funds play massive roles in the capital markets, yet are under-discussed and not fully understood relative to their importance.
“They are the LP investors in many of the hedge funds; they are the deal-making people which engage the investment banks and they're typically the mother of the funds.”
Sovereign funds have historically been more passive in their investing, but have become much more active. Even more recently, funds have shifted away from traditional asset classes like real estate to venture. This shift to venture is a higher risk, higher reward investment profile and has offered a large pool of available venture capital in places like Silicon Valley.
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SPEAKER
Winston Ma
Former Managing Director
China Investment Corporation (CIC)
MODERATOR
Anthony Scaramucci
Founder & Managing Partner
SkyBridge
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Rachel Pether: (00:08)
Hi everyone and welcome back to Salt Talks. My name is Rachel pether and I'm a senior advisor to SkyBridge Capital based in Abu Dhabi, as well as being the MC result. Thought Leadership Forum and networking platform that encompasses business technology and politics. Now as many of you know, Salt Talk is a series of digital interviews with some of the world's foremost investors, creators and thinkers. And what we're really trying to do here is, provide our audience a window into the mind of subject matter experts. The subject for today's talk is going to be on sovereign wealth funds and venture capital investing. And who better to discuss these topics with Ben Winston Ma, who is the former Managing Director at the China Investment Corporation, one of China's sovereign wealth funds.
Rachel Pether: (00:56)
He spent 10 years as the MJ and Head of North America for the CIC, and was a founding member of the CIA's private equity department, and also the Special Investment Department, direct investor. He is the author of China's Mobile Economy, the Digital Silk Road, China's AI Big Bang, and investing in China. He also has two new books coming out this year, actually, one later this week, which we'll go into more detail on later. In 2013, Winston was selected as a Young Global Leader at the World Economic Forum. He has multiple degrees, and he has served as an adjunct professor at a number of world class universities. As always, if you have any questions for Winston, just enter them in the Q&A section of your screen. And with that, Winston, welcome to sell talks.
Winston Ma: (01:46)
Yeah, thanks for having me, Rachel.
Rachel Pether: (01:50)
It's such a pleasure to have you with us today once so now you are you're an investor, you're an attorney, You're an author, and you're obviously also a professor in the global digital economy. So maybe we just start by you telling me a bit more about your personal background.
Winston Ma: (02:07)
In 1997, I received a scholarship from NYU Law School. So I came to New York, which started my Wall Street career. First, as a lawyer at the Davis Polk, and then after B-School, I joined JP Morgan, for Equity Capital Markets, convertibles and derivatives. 2007, Barclays Capital, started US equity business and they hired me to start their business. And they also in the same year, CSE was set up to manage a portion of China's sovereign wealth the trillion dollar foreign reserve. So starting from the beginning of 2008, I moved back to China to become an investment professional to manage a portion of the country's wealth.
Winston Ma: (03:00)
Between the 10 years at CIC, I also spent four years in Toronto, Canada for CSE North America office actually for the first time, CIC had overseen the office, and they picked Toronto for the North America presence. That was sort of my 20 years in the capital markets. 10 years on Wall Street, working on global capital and China opportunities. And then, last 10 years I was with CIC that was more like China capital and global investments. Right? And I moved back last year to back to the capital markets, it seems life has its own way of circling around, and the rhymes in different time is not that interesting [crosstalk 00:03:50]
Rachel Pether: (03:52)
Definitely, and so with over this 10 years of experience, I do want to sort of maybe take a step back and start with the why. So, you have a great deal of experience with the sovereign wealth fund world and your time at the CIC. Why is this group of investors increasingly important for the capital market players?
Winston Ma: (04:14)
Yeah, to put this into context, right, here's a quick question, who holds the power in the financial markets? To many people the answer probably would be, the large investment banks, the big asset managers and the hedge funds because they are often in the Media Spotlight, right? But this new group of sovereign funds, I would say because this concept includes the sovereign wealth funds, includes the public pension funds, as well as the investment arms of many central banks. And this group of investors have huge amount of capital, it is estimated that they have $30 billion, sorry trillion dollars actually, $30 trillion on the management.
Winston Ma: (05:00)
So they have enormous power in the financial market. And to put this again into the contest, right, they are actually the enablers of the players in the media every day. They are the LP investors in many of the hedge funds. And they are the deal making people which engage the investment banks and certainly, they're typically the mother of the funds, or many asset managers, just starting from their large size of capital, they are super, super important to this capital markets. But they are still very little known. And that's why it is important for the capital markets to get to understand this group.
Rachel Pether: (05:47)
Interesting, and last time I saw you was actually in Austin, and we were at a sovereign wealth fund conference and I pretty much just sit here in my apartment, and you've actually gone and written two books, and one of them is about this digital economy at the hunt for unicorns, how the funds are reshaping investments in the digital economy. Can you tell me more what we can expect from less than how that 30 trillion of investment capital plays into the digital economy?
Winston Ma: (06:19)
Sure, the big background of this is, these sovereign funds used to be very passive and behind the scene, and in recent years they've become, many become much more active and direct in the capital markets. And they started with the traditional asset classes, like infrastructures or real estate or the general p industries. And in more recent years, they made this leap forward into the venture investing, which used to be viewed as drastically different from institutional investing, right, because venture investing is very specialized. And it's tends to be very early stage and small ticket size. And they are, they take times and they are a high risk, high return, which is very different from the typical risk profile, right. That the institutional investors look for.
Winston Ma: (07:28)
So it's in this kind of context, we come to see the sovereign funds become the new power for venture capitalists, and they naturally bring change to the traditional play of venture investing and Silicon Valley. So the way to think about their difference is in the following ways. Firstly, obviously the large size, they have trillions of dollars under management just individually right for some largest players. So their average equity check is very large, very different from the typical VC investment. And secondly, they are much more long term, fewer IPO of tech companies compared to many years ago. Right. And there's a third aspect is, they are called sovereign investors, so they inevitably they have this government connections. So in the middle of this geopolitical tensions around tech competition, inevitably, they're caught up in the global tensions, which is also different from the typical VC fund.
Rachel Pether: (08:37)
Yeah, so she let's pick up on each of those points that you just mentioned, the first one being about the large ticket size, and
Winston Ma: (08:45)
exactly
Rachel Pether: (08:45)
how big daddy, and if you look at the SoftBank Vision Fund, right.
Winston Ma: (08:49)
Exactly
Rachel Pether: (08:49)
100 billion dollars, 60 billion from two Middle Eastern investors. So, can you elaborate a bit more on actually how the sovereign wealth funds access this venture capital, and maybe also specifically on how the vision fund has impacted this landscape?
Winston Ma: (09:08)
Yeah, the vision fund is a great example of this big ticket size of the sovereign funds. Because the overall theme of vision fund can be summarized by two words, right, think big. I think that's sort of the motto from Masayoshi Son, think big. So, from the unicorn side, I think that means the startup masters, think big in terms of develop their business and become the leading company in their respective sector, right. I think that's what Masayoshi Son was preaching. And then from correspondingly from the investment perspective, that means they are ready to write a very big check, right?
Winston Ma: (09:55)
So in a sense, they are not only the unicorn hunters, but they also they can be viewed as unicorn feeders. Yeah, obviously if you didn't find a fitting that built, but a lot of other sovereign funds are also in that category, right? The best example of that probably is head of financial, the upcoming IPO of the fintech arm of Alibaba. Now they of course, they're looking for a 200 billion plus valuation for IPO, that's a large number. But even before this IPO two years ago, when they had the private round of financing, they got to 100 because they got to 150 billion valuation. To a large extent thanks to many sovereign funds investing during that that round which includes the Singapore sovereign funds of Temasek and the GIC.
Winston Ma: (10:49)
And even some less known sovereign funds, like the Malaysia is khazanah. And also, guys from the patient world, such as CPPIB Canadian patients. And of course before that 150 billing round CIC and China's Social Security fund another sovereign investment vehicles of China, were already investors in enter financial years ago, right. So, these big ticket investments from the same investors definitely created these unprecedented valuation of unicorns. That's the Think of Big Site, right. And the consequences, now we have too many of the unicorns. It's 2013, when the word unicorn was created, there were 38 unicorns across the world. And by 2020, by the data end of 2019, globally there are more than 400 unicorns, that means during the seven, eight years, seven years actually, we had a tenfold increase of the number of unicorns, and I would say just think big from sovereign funds. A tree is a major reason for that.
Rachel Pether: (12:15)
And don't you think that's for myself actuating as these unicorns are often the market leaders and extremely well capitalized. That's almost a self fulfilling prophecy. And that sort of thing. Like you get a startup, $500 million to build a business, they're going to crush the competition. They have similar teams and other resources.
Winston Ma: (12:41)
I think the word similar is the key, Rachel, because in some way unicorns are hunted, they are manufactured. Once people see the formula of well, two unicorns a lot of smart people began to industrialize that manufacturing chain of unicorns, right. It's not only in Silicon Valley, but also in China. And it's not only China in the US, but also other innovation hubs in the world, such as India, right. The typical ingredients of a unicorn is online service, based on online service on internet platforms, promoted by social media, right, and partnership with existing giants, who have large user traffic.
Winston Ma: (13:36)
And of course, on top of that as you mentioned, right is taking the venture money and subsidize users to generate more traffic and attention. Right. So, this is the time of this time to come to reflect a tree. There's this global downturn, this pandemic, right. And this global tensions all the headwinds are ravaging the hurt. When you take a closer look at the hurt some are pretty troublesome, some already took on too much fat they can now race, some are beautiful show, not for the race and some are even worse, they already got sick from their own issues, like we work that kind of situation, right? So, you need like, you have to kind of see a doctor. So this is a very interesting time to revisit this hurt[crosstalk 00:14:41]. They have to be kind of active investor even more quickly, to take on the unicorns more directly and in a more involved way.
Rachel Pether: (14:55)
Yeah, I think that's a great point on the case studies and I'd love to dive a bit in front We work later on, and then how might be excess capital played into that equation. But one of the points you mentioned was this long term investment piece. We actually had Russ and I know that you're friends with as well from the hedge fund. And he was on yesterday talking about how countries can and should use their wealth to invest more domestically and potentially, especially given the current pandemic impacting local economies. How do you see that playing out? And what are your views on investing in the hometown?
Winston Ma: (15:39)
Yes, that's a great, great point very relevant in the post COVID global economic recovery. The background of this is even before pandemic, a lot of the sovereign funds already have multiple objectives, on one hand they seek financial returns, at the same time they are also trying to use their investments to help their domestic economic development. And in the Middle East the guys you mentioned are probably the best examples, certainly, when they put a 60 billion in vision fund, they're not only looking for financial investments, right. But also they want to transform their economies from fossil fuel based into more innovation based economy, right.
Winston Ma: (16:29)
And we're seeing more and more like this for example, in Africa, right, you see more sovereign funds are being they are being created, to better manage their resources money, and use them to finance their economic transformation, especially the digital transformation. Right. So I think the way we put this into historic context where it can be like this, during the last, after the last financial crisis, 2008 lots of countries have used the sovereign funds or mobilized sovereign funds to invest new infrastructure as a catalyst for economic recovery. Right. And let's say 12 years later, 2020, for the post COVID recovery, it's quite natural that the countries would do similar things, but I think they will focus more on the digital ecosystem, to your economy ecosystem, and the digital infrastructure.
Winston Ma: (17:33)
Obviously the world is still lack of more toll roads and highways and utility grid, right. But at the same time to be competitive in the upcoming digital economy the emerging markets, I would argue, have even more important need for more digital infrastructures, data centers, fiber connectivities, and even just the basic internet connectivity, so that, globally about the three billion people who do not have the internet connectivity can be part of the digital ecosystem. That can bring some growth catalyst to the world economy. So I can imagine, just like during the last crisis the government funds have used a sovereign capital to invest in infrastructure to promote growth. Now, we may see more sovereign funds, putting money into digital economy, as the new growth engine post to call it.
Rachel Pether: (18:46)
Yeah, no, that's a great point. As you mentioned, we are seeing that in the Middle East, particularly, as well, you've placed a lot of emphasis on this word sovereign. And obviously, they are represented 100% owned by sovereign nations. How do you see the tension? Because we spoke about China, US tech investment is also kind of at the forefront of the geopolitical battle rail, as well. So could you maybe explain how that technology battle sort of plays into that geopolitical tension?
Winston Ma: (19:22)
Yes, the technology is the front line of every index, right. And it's no exception for the sovereign funds. But to some extent it's kind of just coincidence of time. But it played out in the broader context. What I mean by this is the sovereign funds are obviously becoming active investors and direct investors in technology. So from the historical context, it's a natural extension, right? They started as passive investor, and they become the random Investors in the asset classes they're familiar with, like infrastructure in a real estate and a graduate they extend into every sectors they are interested. So they become this new venture capitalist.
Winston Ma: (20:15)
So this is the historical context. But let's say the current attention is we were just talking about the historical development. But the current attention is that technology is viewed as a strategic assets of a country. Right. like the data, like advanced technology these are viewed as strategic assets, and even national security by all nations. Right. So it's just interesting to see this collision at a time that all the sovereign funds are becoming actively invested in the tech sector, and they recognize that tech investments can be a useful tool for their own economic development. On the other hand, right, there's a host countries, the countries that are receiving the capital investment, become more alert or become more conscious of the value of technology, and they are increasing their regulations and scrutiny, right, of such foreign investments. And I think that's sort of the context of this collision we're seeing today
Rachel Pether: (21:33)
I guess you mean, TikTok in the current debates in the US a great example of that data and the information.
Winston Ma: (21:49)
Exactly, TikTok probably the best example of this. It's really not surprising to you, it's a main case for my upcoming book, right, into the title of The Hunt for Unicorn, hasami investments, change the future of digital economy. So what I meant by that is, TikTok represents a very important case study for all the stakeholders in this. One, entry. First of all, it's a very positive story, because a TikTok represents a growth story during pandemic, right? Because of the pandemic TIKTOK during the first half of 2020, was the second most downloaded app in the world. And of course you know what's the number one, right, this is Zoom? So after Zoom, TikTok was most downloaded. So it shows you that even with the pandemic, there are still growth areas, right.
Winston Ma: (22:54)
So there are still new opportunities coming up, which means this hunt for unicorn story will continue. That's number one, very pod. The second aspect of this uniqueness of the TikTok cases is that it may give us useful reference in terms of cross border data management, because except for the US company, Apple, TikTok and its parent company ByteDance is the only company in the world that has large number of users in both US and China. They have Chinese users and US users in respective territory each shoe is more than 100 Millions, which is unique trick. So, this is the first case of governments to work out a scheme that can handle a company that has data in different countries. Like Google does not have a presence in China. So Google doesn't have this issue. Facebook is not in China, Facebook doesn't have that issue. Alibaba is very big in China, but Alibaba is not very big in the US. Right.
Winston Ma: (24:16)
But TikTok and ByteDance is unique in the sense that it has users in both countries, and no matter what kind of the term sheet come out, it will be a very useful reference to understand how governments kind of going to work out. And then the third aspect of the TikTOK cases is there's real money on the line. Right? Because if there's no solution and right now the US is saying, you mus sell, you must sell TikTok to US companies, because it's national security of the US, right. And a Chinese saying we were going to manage the sale of the algorithm, because this is the national security of China. Right? So if I tell you, as a former GEO lawyer banker investor, it's not very easy to please do governments at the same time, right. So if you don't have a good term sheet, if you don't have a solution, then TikTok must be shut down. And it's Then the 50 billion valuation people put to TikTok work will go just like that. So there's real money on the line in the context of the TikTok case.
Rachel Pether: (25:33)
Do you actually say that as a risk that it could just be shut down? If they can't come to a conclusion?
Winston Ma: (25:40)
Maybe, because if you don't have a solution like, who eventually hold the algorithm. And who will manage and control the user data? Right. And just to highlight the complexity remind you that the algorithm has been trained by data from both sides. So in a sense that the China algorithm was trained by the US user data. So it's not very easy to come up with a rationale to give this thing up, women need the King Solomon, to give us some wisdom about this.
Rachel Pether: (26:30)
I guess as you say, it's a very interesting case study. Because normally, when you look at China and the US digital economy, it's quite bifurcated, right? So you have, Amazon, you have Alibaba. And I guess this is a true case that I also want to briefly touch on because you've been looking at this area for a while you published China's Mobile Economy a few years ago on that and looked at sort of the world changing digital transformation in China. Back then, why was an inflection points on the internet in China, and maybe also talk about how today's geopolitical tensions is applying to that?
Winston Ma: (27:12)
Yeah, sure the book of China's Mobile Economy was written in 2016, published in 2016. And that was sort of the fastest growth time of China's mobile internet. That was certainly a huge inflection point for China's internet, because overnight, people go mobile. Right. So, that's the beginning of this mobile only age. What I mean, mobile only me. I mean, for many Chinese people, their first time to be connected to the internet, is the time they have a smartphone. They never had a PC, they never had a landline phone. But with the smartphone, all of a sudden, they have a phone, and it also they have the internet.
Winston Ma: (27:59)
And that's a very big thing because in just a few years, China become this largest mobile internet population in the world with more than 900 million people that's almost like the combined population of the US and Europe right. So that's a huge, huge growth during just this few years. Now the development of the internet industry of that time can be referred to as copied to China. CTC Copy to China, which means the first generation of Chinese tech companies had their start as copycat versions of Western size. In a cell phone, Alibaba was viewed as the Chinese version of eBay, at the very beginning, Alibaba and then it added alipay so you say that's eBay plus PayPal, or Weibo it was viewed as Chinese version of Twitter, and Tencent may be viewed as Chinese version of Facebook plus messenger, right.
Winston Ma: (29:19)
That's the general perception during that time, right. Now what's interesting is after this period of growth, China's innovation ecosystem has entered into the second face, this face in many areas actually, China has become a trendsetter instead of a trend-follower in the mobile economy for example, TikTok is very good example. Right? It started this phenomenon of short video, and then Facebook is adding similar features to its empire. Right. So, this face you can refer to China copy PCC, right. And of course there's a short video just for the teenagers, but the doubt version of this is in the last couple years, like China was mostly doing the ketchup relating to smartphones and The 4G network and in and the mobile internet economy. But with last few years of development, China has become a equally interesting Innovation Center just like the Silicon Valley of the US.
Winston Ma: (30:38)
Right? So what do you see is, the big data from the 900 million users have become the base for AI and big data analytics. The large internet platforms in China become the infrastructure for next generation startups. And of course during that process, a huge millions of college students become entrepreneurs, college graduates. So I think in new summary, essentially, what we're seeing is, in theory, the 4G, the age of 4G, and the smartphone, China had proved its catch up. And now, as we enter into the age of 5G, China is becoming a equally important innovation centers, and in many areas, China is competing with the US head to head and to your question about geopolitical tension context. And I think that's the link to the geopolitical tensions. Because years ago, it was a follower. Now, it is a competator.
Rachel Pether: (31:48)
Yeah, that's a great point less likely to be threatened by someone else by just following what you're doing. And actually, we have a number of audience questions that have come in, and they're all quite heavy, meaty questions, so I am going to go through them. We have time. So again, thank you, as always, for your question. Again, he's asked what do you think so we had is really on giving his perspective that China and the western market are developing bifurcated internet standards? And are there different approaches to say the development of AI? And maybe you could also talk about what you mentioned about how China's market size plays into that, and just that maybe give them an advantage? In this area with 900? Or over a billion users?
Winston Ma: (32:37)
Yes, specific AI right I think what's, what's really makes China different is the government come up with a comprehensive policy and agenda to set for its development phase, development paths the trigger point was 2017, when Google's AI machine beat a Chinese player in the go chess game, which proved that AI is way let's say smarter than human players. Right. And that sort of triggered China's rush into AI. And of course every country is talking about AI. But what's really unique about Chinese it comes from the central government, as well as the private sectors, it's the central government level, since we're talking about sovereign funds today what's remarkable is, it came up with a top level kind of vision that by 2030 in just like 12 years from that game, China will become the world's leading AI superpower.
Winston Ma: (33:55)
Right. And then from there the different ministries come up with different kind of industry guidelines. So, for example, the NDRC come up with rules relating to AI champions setting standards for different AI industries, for example, autonomous vehicles, or the education ministry, where come up with guidelines set up, I think the plan was to have more than 100 majors on AI, at different universities, so on so forth, right. So what's really sets China apart is this common efforts and the common vision and the government resources to be put into this effort and of course the size of the market, 900 million users united by the same language, same culture and the same mobile payment means a lot of activities, internet platform every day, which left a tremendous amount of data and they organized the data on these internet platform that can be used to train AI algorithms, right. So to some extent the flexible policy for flexible regulation on data is also a helpful fact during the early years of AI
Rachel Pether: (35:32)
Yeah, and we actually have another audience question, which was kind of builds on these internet giants and China. Edsger Alonzo, it would be great to get your thoughts on the future of Tencent and Alibaba, given that they've seemed to extend their reach into asset management, media, logistics, and then also taking stakes and other companies that are quite forward looking themselves as venture capitalists investors. So how do you see this company[inaudible 00:36:01]
Winston Ma: (36:03)
So I think, to answer this question, I will start by saying if there's anything that's in agreement, by US and China governments, it's in the regulation of the Big Tech. There's not too many things that China and the US government agree in these days, but it seems like they have pretty much consensus on regulating the Big Tech. Right, so forth. So let's use anti financial for the first example. Right, for anti financial? It's the financial arm of Alibaba and of course we all know, right. As we're all in the financial market, we all know, the financial sector is always heavily regulated. And in the early years as I mentioned earlier, right, China takes more flexible approach to regulation. So in the early years, Alibaba enjoys super growth because there's very relaxed environment. But as we speak, in 2020, we start seeing more and more regulation. And more and more regulation of this sector.
Winston Ma: (37:16)
And also more and more risk alert as from the regulators. So for example, this China's central bank starts to warn about this system, systemic risk of financial lending platform, right, because you when they use internet data then they can do remote lending without the need of collateral. So this may be a maybe a risk to the financial system, according to the central bank. Right. And, of course, the central bank, plus the minister commerce in they are looking at an antitrust issue and financial and related internet system. And most recently very funny theory in IPO. Right the China's securities regulators they talk on end because, and to use the mutual funds on their own platform to sell their IPO shares, which triggered China intense review.
Winston Ma: (38:20)
So you can see these regulations are coming up. And of course in the US, you also see antitrust pressure on these internet giants going up in and also you have this to prick attention related, Big Tech regulation, right? Because enter financial entry, according to media reports, last couple days, is being watched by US as the potential target for crackdown in the US. So, I think probably the most pragmatic or practical way to view to think about the prospect of guys like Alibaba and Ant Financial and Tencent is to have a realistic prediction of their future growth. They will still have growth, because they are the momentum is just tremendous. But the regulators are taking our action so we should have more, let's say, realistic projection for their future growth.
Rachel Pether: (39:36)
Yeah, that's a great point. And we've actually had a couple of questions coming in. And we haven't even touched on this yet. And it is quite a big topic, but on the China's One Belt, One Road initiative. How do you think like, what's the long term perspective by the sovereign wealth funds, sort of efforts to benefit society such as China's and business for the One Belt, One Road, I guess, in addition to the physical infrastructure and the digital infrastructure? And we've also had a question saying how important was sovereign wealth funds be driving securitization of the now almost 800 billion and One Belt One Road loans
Winston Ma: (40:23)
Sorry, yeah securitization of 100 million projects
Rachel Pether: (40:29)
Of the loans associated with One Belt One Road.
Winston Ma: (40:35)
Interesting, yeah. Honestly, I haven't really put too much thought about this securitization thing. In general when you have a sovereign credit, you don't have to worry too much of that. But I think the potential solution of this credit issue along One Belt One Road project, a tree may come from the sovereign wealth funds of those local countries, what I mean by that is the local sovereign wealth funds can be a great partner for China capital, with respect to One Belt One Road projects in those countries. They because when they are part of the game, they bring the local credit into the mix, and they may even sort of use this credit support to engage more institutional investors in the mix, more capital markets institutional investors into the mix that may provide a better solution to the credit issue.
Winston Ma: (41:52)
And I think that going forward, we may see more Digital Belt Road, and actually the term for that as Digital Silk Road, this digital prom of one belt one road, and which means down the road we may see more nimble investments. Of course, you will still have similar infrastructure projects let's say internet connectivity infrastructures, right? Or the smartphone network or the satellite towers and so forth. But there will be more investments, let's say in the ecosystem, let's say mobile payment, right, let's say ecommerce platform so I suppose Which means they are not necessarily as capital intensive, as the traditional Belt and Road, that people relate to me because most of the time people relate Belt and Road into Toros highways and steak like a state and utility grid, a type of infrastructures, right. But in the going forward in the digital economy, that the digital economy ecosystem, in this kind of like, soft connectivity is just as important. And we may see like, a more kind of private equity type of investment as compared to the traditional infrastructure investments, Yeah.
Rachel Pether: (43:22)
Yeah, absolutely. Digital and physical infrastructure. We are over time, but I did want to just make sure I answered those audience questions, although we do still have some outstanding time. Sorry about that. But I know we've spoken about geopolitical tension and your upcoming book is actually called potential war, but I do always like to end on an optimistic note. So maybe talk a bit more about that. While we can hope for even though the title of your book is, The DigitaL War.
Winston Ma: (43:57)
Yeah, my other book is titled The Digital War, how China's tech power, shapes the future of AI blockchain and the cyberspace. I certainly think that the interconnectivity of the countries not only in the digital cyberspace, but also in a kind of real economy will still keep us working together and find the synergies. And again if we look at the IPO of Ant financial as an example certainly they have existing investors from all over the world and for the IPO. Guess who the underwriters they're the Wall Street investment banks, right. And for lots of the distribution, I can bet you that a lot will go to US institutional investors, even though they will be listed in Hong Kong and Shanghai right now, Nasdaq, partly because of the tension. But you can still see different levels of connectivities between the two countries. So I'm still positive
Rachel Pether: (44:59)
Well some people always came to collaborate when there's a commercial upside.
Winston Ma: (45:05)
Exactly, Money Matters.
Rachel Pether: (45:08)
Yeah, quite right. Well, we are we're actually not out of time. We're slightly over time, but I just wanted to thank you so much. It's been a pleasure. As always, I really appreciate you giving up your time to speak to us today.
Winston Ma: (45:21)
Yes, thank you very much, Rachel. Thanks for having me on the show talk.