To me this idea conflicts with the fact that they are minority shareholders in the two international components. I'm not sure exactly what the management structure is, but if Alibaba really thought it might be run into the ground by Yahoo it seems that they could do something to kick Yahoo out.
The argument is not that Yahoo! will burn Alibaba to the ground. It's that their asset holding in Alibaba will have to be liquidated to make up for losses by Core Yahoo!
That is, they might burn their stake in Alibaba to the ground.
