The prediction was vintage Jack Ma, as provocative as it was prescient.
"This is the era of the internet,” the Chinese billionaire proclaimed in October 2013, just weeks after his plan to take Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. public in Hong Kong had been scuttled by regulators. "It no longer belongs to Li Ka-shing.”
Ma’s dig at the famed Hong Kong tycoon raised plenty of eyebrows at the time, but few would disagree with him now. The past few years have seen a remarkable shift in fortunes between China’s tech-savvy moguls and their old-school Hong Kong counterparts — a trend that shows few signs of fading any time soon.