Jack Ma, founder and executive chairman of Alibaba Group Holding, addresses the media during the inaugural Gateway '17 event at Cobo Center in Detroit, Michigan, June 20, 2017. [Photo/VCG]

To better serve the 300 million Chinese middle class who won't hesitate to pay heftily for good-quality products, Jack Ma, founder and executive chairman of Alibaba, planed an event, the Gateway '17, from June 20-21 in Detroit to encourage US companies to sell on its big online marketplaces in China.

According to Ma, some of the small US businesses that have sold successfully through Alibaba's shopping portals include Peter Verbrugge, a cherry farmer in the Pacific Northwest, who has sold through an Alibaba program that transports tons of newly ripened cherries to China for sale on Tmall.

"We are already a gateway for thousands of global brands, retailers and companies to sell to Chinese consumers," Ma wrote in a letter released earlier. "We want to expand that gateway-level the playing field-to make it easy for American entrepreneurs, small businesses and farmers alike to take advantage of the China opportunity."

About 3,000 American SMEs registered for the summit, almost triple the number Alibaba expected. Among them, 673 were from Michigan and 103 from the Detroit metro area.

Industry observers said the event was also to fulfill the promise Ma made during his meeting with the then-president-elect Donald Trump in January - that Alibaba could help create 1 million US jobs over five years by enabling small businesses to sell goods on Alibaba's e-commerce platforms.