I worked at Ali and have seen 马云 speak in person. I get that it seems a bit weird because he's _not_ technical, nor particularly enlightened in any area, but the success of the company is in part due to his excellence as a manager. It's part of the reason Ali wasn't, until very recently, in gaming because he wanted to focus the company and to abide by a certain set of principles.
To your second point: doing business in China is partially owed to the niche that the government carves for you. Look at the debacle of Ofo vs Mobike. You need to grow at all costs until you can overtake competition then you're protected.
I guess I'm skeptical that you can be an excellent manager with that level of inability to discuss anything of depth. The excellent managers I've interacted with (especially at the exec level) have always been really sharp and had a pretty deep understanding of the stack even if they're not themselves programmers. The ones that don't or can't are usually bad.
> doing business in China is partially owed to the niche that the government carves for you...You need to grow at all costs until you can overtake competition then you're protected.
I suspect this protection is what allows people to succeed that would otherwise fail in a real competition. In that interview he comes across like an empty suit/figurehead. It wasn't a huge surprise to me that they got rid of him.
To your second point: doing business in China is partially owed to the niche that the government carves for you. Look at the debacle of Ofo vs Mobike. You need to grow at all costs until you can overtake competition then you're protected.