China's Alibaba plots its global domination by hiring a Canadian former Olympic athlete

While touring the U.S. and pitching business leaders in June, Alibaba's eccentric billionaire founder Jack Ma proclaimed in editorials and speeches that his company "was founded in China but created for the world."

Now Alibaba is taking the next step to prove its global appeal by recruiting a well-known banker and onetime Olympic gold medalist — and the man who helped establish Goldman Sachs in China.

The Chinese e-commerce giant has named Michael Evans, a former executive at Goldman Sachs and independent director on Alibaba's board, as its new president. In that role, Evans will be tasked with leading The Alibaba Group's charge to expand its presence internationally, said to be the company's top priority to secure its future.

“Globalization is Alibaba Group’s most important strategy for the coming decades," Daniel Zhang, Alibaba's CEO, said in a statement Tuesday. "We have been laying the foundation for many years and now we need a global team in place with best-in-class talent to bring our vision to fruition."

For Alibaba and its leadership, the appointment comes at a key moment. Zhang took over as CEO in May after a long swoon in Alibaba's following its blockbuster $25 billion IPO. The stock enjoyed a brief rebound, but has languished again in recent days on broader concerns about China's crashing stock market.

Alibaba will provide the first glimpse into whether the turbulence in China's stock market has impacted consumer demand when it reports earnings next week. Either way, the re-doubled focus on building up its ties to international markets may help buoy investor optimism.

"By taking somebody from the board who is that senior and reporting to the CEO, whose broad role is the entire international expansion, it means that this has become a bigger focus," says Gil Luria, an analyst who covers Alibaba for Wedbush. "I expect them to continue to move aggressively."

Evans isn't just any business executive: He was a top banker with connections in Asia who helped with the Goldman Sachs public offering, then rose up in the company, helped establish and run Goldman Sach's business in China, and was seen as a possible candidate to challenge the stronghold of the bank's CEO, Lloyd Blankfein. Before all that, he won a gold medal for rowing with the Canadian team in the 1984 Olympics.

Alibaba's strategy to expand internationally combines marketing its existing services like AliExpress and Tmall Global to brands and shoppers in emerging markets while also relying on its vast war chest to invest in e-commerce startups around the world, including Snapdeal in India and Amazon rivals ShopRunner and Jet in the U.S. It has also backing a host of other consumer-facing startups like Lyft and Snapchat.

"Others like Amazon, eBay, Rakuten and MercadoLibre all branched out into other markets years ago - Alibaba was the exception in focusing on a single market," says Zia Daniell Wigder, an analyst with Forrester Research. "They're making a number of investments that are getting them exposure to other markets - for example, SingPost, Jet, Snapdeal - but they're still learning what it takes to succeed as an eCommerce player outside of China."

For now, the primary international focus for Alibaba is to make more Western goods available to China's 600 million-plus Internet users. That includes the U.S. market, where Ma courted entrepreneurs and business leaders to use the e-commerce platform he helped create to sell to Chinese customers.

"Their focus in the US is currently on cross-border eCommerce initiatives and enabling US-based merchants to sell to Chinese consumers," Wigder said. "This allows them to get experience with US sellers but plays to their strength in understanding the needs of online shoppers in China."

Now Evans can join Ma in making that pitch.