Online Sales in China exceeded USD 366B in 2016, almost comparable to e-commerce sales in the United States (360B in 2016). Note that online retail is “only” about 8.5% of the overall retail market in the United States. According to Fortune Magazine, Amazon was 34% of the US e-commerce market. However, China is an entirely different story. Amazon barely makes an appearance among the big e-commerce contenders. Taobao – an e-Bay like electronic market place owned by Alibaba commands a lion’s share of the China e-commerce market. Perhaps, even more, impressive is the scale of vertical integration of mobile payment systems with their corresponding e-commerce websites. For instance, the largest third-party payment system, Alipay, the mobile payment arm of Alibaba, has…
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