With a year-to-date (YTD) gain of nearly 70%, Alibaba's (BABA) stock has outperformed the markets significantly this year. The Chinese tech giant, which was once the face of China’s brutal tech crackdown, is now back in the government’s good graces as the country backs its domestic companies amid the artificial intelligence (AI) upmanship between the U.S. and China. Alibaba is among the prominent AI plays in China and has attracted interest from investors seeking to capitalize on the China AI story. In my ...