It could be a tough road back to Hong Kong for Alibaba. Five years after the $400 billion Chinese e-commerce company opted to go public in New York, it is working on a plan to raise as much as $20 billion from a secondary listing. Seeking fresh capital alongside younger rivals suggests its dominance is under threat.

Founder Jack Ma has long eyed having Alibaba's equity traded in Hong Kong. In 2014, the financial hub's regulators balked at his corporate governance, which gives a group of self-selecting executives the power to nominate most of the board. Ma ultimately raised a record $25 billion on the New York Stock Exchange. Since then, however, Hong Kong's bourse operator has eased its listing requirements. Alibaba could file to sell stock there in a matter of months, Reuters reported.

There is some validity to the idea. Alibaba's shares have traded at a valuation discount to its similarly sized Hong Kong-listed arch-rival, Tencent. A scarcity of publicly traded technology companies in Hong Kong is one factor. 

Better access to money from the mainland, where investors are more familiar with Alibaba's sprawling empire, also could help. Even so, it's a curious time to be seeking liquidity or funding. For example, some $3.3 billion of Alibaba shares changed hands on Friday, making it the most actively traded company by dollar volume on the New York Stock Exchange. Nor is it obvious why Alibaba might need $20 billion. The company's businesses threw off some $3 billion of operating cash in the three months to March, boosting its trove to nearly $30 billion. 

That does not mean, however, that a new listing would come from a position of strength. China's escalating trade and tech tensions with the US are weighing on Alibaba, whose shares have fallen by 22 percent over the past year. Costly investments in everything from cloud computing to Southeast Asian e-commerce have yet to deliver meaningful returns as growth at home slows. 

Upstart challengers such as the $24 billion Pinduoduo also have increasingly put the goliath on its back foot. The quest for a Hong Kong market debut makes some of these cracks more apparent.

The author is Robyn Mak, a Reuters Breakingviews columnist. The article was first published on Reuters Breakingviews. bizopinion@globaltimes.com.cn