China’s new stars – Kathleen E. McLaughlin

From the San Francisco Chronicle:

Jack Ma, diminutive and wispy, a boyish former English teacher, does not fit the mold of a man who would attract groupies. Yet he’s constantly surrounded.

Ma has attained cult status as the most famous of an elite group in China — the country’s Internet entrepreneurs. The half-dozen or so men in their 30s hold sway over a booming, homegrown element of the world’s fastest-growing economy.