The self-reliance journey of Taiwanese young woman Wu Minghua: from "Joe Tsai's wife" to the owner of the WNBA championship-winning team
Joseph Tsai, Chairman of the Alibaba Group Board of Directors, and his wife Clara Wu Tsai, recently officially announced their divorce through the media. There was no equity dispute, no drawn-out asset division tussle, nor any plunge in Alibaba's stock price. The two jointly completed the most decent divorce for adults.
"Over the years, the relationship has gradually evolved into a partnership." The public saw this line in the media that published their divorce statement. Some people sigh that wealth can never bring lifelong love to people.
But from a feminist perspective, Clara Wu Tsai lives a full and remarkable life. She is a top student from Stanford, an MBA graduate from Harvard University, former Vice President of American Express Asia, an early advisor of Alibaba, and a business operator who single-handedly turned a fringe WNBA team into a championship team valued at 450 million US dollars.
She no longer needs to define herself as "Joseph Tsai's wife" — she has her own story.
The eldest daughter of the Tainan Gang, a top student at Stanford
Clara Wu Tsai is a Taiwanese girl born with a silver spoon in her mouth.
In 1966, she was born into a well-off Chinese American family in Kansas, USA. Her grandfather, Wu San-lien, was born in Tainan, Taiwan Province. He participated in anti-colonial movements in his early years and later became the first publicly elected mayor of Taipei. At the same time, relying on the Tainan Gang, Wu San-lien founded listed enterprises such as Tainan Textile and Universal Cement, and held a pivotal influence in the economic circle of Taiwan Province.
Image source from the Internet | Tainan City
Her father Wu Te-min, the second son of Wu San-lien, took an academic path and is a leading authority in the field of econometrics. After graduating from the Department of Economics of National Taiwan University, he went to the United States for further study, obtained a doctorate in economics from the University of Wisconsin, and later served as the head of the Department of Economics at the University of Kansas. The Wu Test he founded is widely known in academic circles.
She also has an older brother, Wu Yonghui, who is the president of NERA (a globally renowned economic consulting firm founded in New York in 1961). This firm has been rated as the highest "Diamond Level" economic consulting firm for many years.
Growing up in such a family, Clara Wu Tsai naturally excelled. She graduated from Lawrence Academy, a prestigious American high school, obtained a bachelor's degree in international relations and a master's degree in international policy studies from Stanford University in 1988, and received her MBA degree from Harvard University in 1993.
Image source from the Internet | Stanford University
After graduation, she started her career at American Express, a Fortune 500 company that started out as an express and freight firm and mainly engages in globally integrated payment services. Clara Wu Tsai started with the most basic financial analysis work there, and within just a few years, she was promoted to the position of Vice President for the Asia region.
During this period, Clara Wu Tsai met Joseph Tsai in New York through the introduction of elders in her family. Joseph Tsai holds a bachelor's degree in economics and a doctorate in law from Yale University, is qualified as a lawyer in New York State, and joined a top Wall Street law firm after graduation to work as a tax lawyer.
Image source from the Internet | Yale University
When he met Clara Wu Tsai, Joseph Tsai was already an elite in the investment banking industry with an annual income of millions of RMB. Their similar elite Chinese family backgrounds and growth experiences quickly brought them together.
In 1996, local American media published a marriage announcement, and Clara Wu Tsai and Joseph Tsai got married in New York. This marriage was a strong alliance between two elite families from the very beginning.
The "Hidden Hero" of Alibaba
"Ali baby."
This is a nickname that Joseph Tsai and Clara Wu Tsai gave to their children.
In 1999, the third year after their marriage, Joseph Tsai resigned from his investment banking job and joined Alibaba, which was a startup at that time.
At that time, Jack Ma was nobody. On a boat on West Lake, Joseph Tsai suddenly said to Jack Ma: "You want to set up a company and raise financing. I understand finance and law, I can join the company to help you." It is said that Jack Ma was so shocked that he almost capsized the boat, and hurriedly replied: "I can only pay you 500 yuan a month here."
Before that, the two had met once. Joseph Tsai admired Jack Ma's eloquence, ability to nurture and identify talents, and charisma. More importantly, he was attracted by Jack Ma's vision: to help Chinese merchants sell their goods to the whole world.
Image source from the Internet | West Lake in Hangzhou
Later, Joseph Tsai recalled that when he told his family about his decision, almost everyone around him opposed it and could not understand it. Clara Wu Tsai herself also found it unbelievable, what's more, she was already an expectant mother at that time. But in the end, she decided to accompany her husband to Hangzhou to pursue his dream.
Clara Wu Tsai recalled later: "At that time I thought my husband was crazy. But I knew that if I didn't agree to let him pursue his dream, he would hate me for the rest of his life."
Clara Wu Tsai later joined Alibaba, serving as group advisor and general manager of Hong Kong business. Although she did not work at Alibaba for a long time, she brought the resources and financial business experience accumulated during her work at American Express to Alibaba, providing key ideas and decision support for the early resource integration and business expansion of Alipay.
Joseph Tsai became one of the twelve founding partners of Alibaba, while Clara Wu Tsai and Joseph Tsai became the "top-tier couple team".
30-fold return on a "non-performing asset"
It was in the sports business field that Clara Wu Tsai truly transformed from "Joseph Tsai's wife" into a female entrepreneur.
In 2019, Joseph Tsai and Clara Wu Tsai acquired the New York Liberty of the Women's National Basketball Association (WNBA) in New York at a price of 10 to 14 million US dollars.
From today's point of view, this acquisition can be called "buying the dip".
The WNBA, founded in 1996, had only 8 teams in its early days. Chinese women's basketball player Zheng Haixia joined the Los Angeles Sparks in 1997, becoming the first Chinese player to land in the WNBA.
Image source from the Internet | Zheng Haixia, the first player to land in the WNBA
The WNBA, which is just adding a "W" (for Woman) in front of NBA, has a completely different commercial value from the NBA.
According to public information, many WNBA players still needed to take commercial flights for away games at that time, and some teams did not have complete training spaces, and even basic lockers were not necessarily available.
The Liberty were "even more shabby". The team originally played at Madison Square Garden, an indoor arena in Manhattan, New York, but was later moved out of New York City by the former owner to the center of Westchester County — a small arena with a scale equivalent to that of a high school gymnasium.
Many players complained: "I can't believe we actually have to play in this kind of place." But team owner Clara Wu Tsai was not discouraged. She later said, "These women have long been underestimated, but they are undoubtedly world-class players."
In response, Clara Wu Tsai carried out a systematic large-scale transformation of the Liberty.
She redeveloped the infrastructure of the Liberty. She moved the team from the suburban arena to the stage in the center of New York City.
The previous small venue could only accommodate 2,000 spectators, but after moving to the Barclays Center in the center of New York City, the athletes got a larger stage, and had their own physical trainers, nutritionists and physical therapists. Clara Wu Tsai also provided players with benefits such as chartered flights for away games. As a result, the enthusiasm of the players was mobilized.
She built a championship lineup for the team. In 2020, the Liberty used the No.1 overall pick to select Sabrina Ionescu, known as the "female Stephen Curry". In 2023, Clara Wu Tsai personally stepped forward to persuade the biggest star player at that time to join the team.
The most critical step is that Clara Wu Tsai redefined the brand soul of the team.
Clara Wu Tsai said that she never operated the Liberty as a "women's basketball team", but transformed it into a sports fashion brand that integrates sports, entertainment, fashion and pop culture, and carried out extensive peripheral product development and community operation.
For example, the team's mascot Ellie the Elephant carries Telfar bags, shoots Fenty Beauty unboxing videos, and runs social media accounts, and the team has established a partnership with Off-White. The Liberty also began to openly embrace the diverse culture that has always existed in the WNBA, creating a completely different game-watching experience from the NBA.
Nowadays, all these measures have achieved very good operating results.
According to Clara Wu Tsai's review, the Barclays Center can accommodate 18,000 spectators. When the team first moved in, the average attendance per game was only 2,000. The number of people was so small that the venue was so quiet that fans could hear the players' breathing sounds.
Image source from the Internet | Barclays Center
But by October 2024, when the Liberty won their first WNBA championship in history, the sidelines were full of celebrities, and tickets for the whole game were hard to get.
Along with professional success, commercial rewards also followed. In 2025, the New York Liberty completed the sale of partial equity at a valuation of 450 million US dollars, setting a new record for the highest valuation of a women's professional sports club. This is dozens of times higher than the actual initial investment of the couple.
By the end of 2024, the number of sponsors of the Liberty had exceeded 50, an increase of nearly 61% over the previous year, bringing a 68% surge in revenue for the team. By 2025, media reports said that the team's valuation had reached 600 million US dollars.
Nowadays, the Liberty is building a 75,000-square-foot training facility with a budget of 80 million US dollars, which is expected to be completed in 2027.
Clara Wu Tsai plans to push the valuation of the Liberty to 1 billion US dollars by the mid-2030s, making it the first club in the history of women's sports with a valuation that "breaks the 1 billion mark".
Philanthropist and power network
In addition to sports business, another identity of Clara Wu Tsai is a philanthropist.
In 2014, she and Joseph Tsai jointly established the "Joe and Clara Tsai Foundation". The foundation's main focus is on two areas: scientific research and community development.
Her interest in this field also comes from her experience operating the team. During the operation of the New York Liberty and other teams, the uncertainty of top athletes getting injured and recovering made Clara Wu Tsai start to think: "How to prevent injuries? When is the right time to return to the court? What kind of diet and rest are the most effective?"
She realized that many current rehabilitation methods are just based on experience. This directly prompted her to think about whether she could inject scientific rigor into this field.
In 2018, Clara Wu Tsai donated to her alma mater Stanford University, promoting the renaming of the neuroscience research institute to "Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute".
The goal of this institute is to understand the operating mechanism of the brain in healthy and diseased states, paving the way for the treatment of neurological diseases such as depression, anxiety and Alzheimer's disease.
Clara Wu Tsai has deep feelings for her alma mater, she said: "We believe that Stanford has unique advantages in promoting brain neuroscience research, seeking effective treatments, and cultivating world scientists for the future."
In 2021, the foundation promised to invest 220 million US dollars to establish the "Wu Tsai Human Performance Alliance", which unites six institutions including Boston Children's Hospital, the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, and Stanford University to promote the combination of sports science and medical research.
What is interesting is that traditional medical research usually focuses on "diseases", while the Wu Tsai Human Performance Alliance aims to study "the healthiest and most vibrant state of the human body", hoping to understand the biological principles behind "excellent performance".
These charitable investments are not only a "feedback" of wealth, but also build a power network for Clara Wu Tsai that spans academia, business and cultural circles.
The hidden card of a "partner-style divorce"
For such a strong woman, her current way of getting divorced can be described in one word as "rational beyond emotion". The reason is that she and Joseph Tsai are