The Chinese e-commerce giant Jack Ma, Alibaba's founder and executive chairman, said Tuesday during a Detroit based conference that he is confident his company will help support one million small U.S. businesses to sell to China and the rest of Asia through its network in the next five years. 

"If we can help one million small businesses online and each business can create one job, we can create one million jobs," Ma said. 

Gateway '17, a conference held by Alibaba in Detroit, is held on June 20 to 21, features presentations and breakout sessions aimed at educating attendees on what and how to sell to China, especially through e-commerce platforms, so that they can grow their businesses and go global. 

Under Ma's ambitions of building a China-driven global online business platform, the Electronic World Trade Platform (e-WTP), along with simple and straightforward regulations, lower barriers for entry into new markets and provide small businesses with easier access to financing. Ma believes Alibaba will help empower small and medium enterprises around the world to access their business into China and rest of Asia market through his platform. 

Ma said Alibaba has been supporting small US businesses to sell and buy online in the past 18 years. In California alone, the company has already helped create more than 20,000 jobs, Ma addressed. 

"At the time we had little experience, now we have a lot of experience," he said. 

The conference marks Alibaba's official first step to introduce opportunities in China to US online business enterprises. Ma made clear that, under globalization and free trade, Alibaba "is going to bring American small businesses and farmers to China, (and) other Asian countries."

He believes China has a big market for overseas' products due to the huge needs from the middle class groups, "because they (are) willing to buy high quality products from overseas."

Although President Trump called out China as a currency manipulator due to "its past efforts to drive down the value of the renminbi to gain a trade advantage," US small businesses are still eager to get their products out to the world. 

Cross-border shopping is a promising area of growth for online retailers and Alibaba aims to provide the knowledge and tools necessary to make it relatively simple.

"In the past 20 years, globalization and free trade were designed for big companies and developed countries. In the next 30 years, we should make globalization more inclusive to support small businesses, young people and farmers," Ma pointed out. 

“For US merchants, a lot of that cross-border traffic is being driven by online shoppers in China. And Alibaba, having both a marketplace and a cross-border offering for non-Chinese merchants, is hoping to be those merchants' gateway to e-commerce in China,” said Lily Varon, a business strategy analyst with Forrester.