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Tag: China

  • China helps power Burberry quarterly sales up 5 per cent

    China helps power Burberry quarterly sales up 5 per cent

    Burberry quarterly sales have jumped by a solid 5 per cent, largely buoyed by a doubling of turnover in China.

    Greater China is a key market for Burberry, accounting for almost a quarter of total sales.

    A social media campaign – including activity by Beijing blogger ‘Mr Bags’ – helped boost brand awareness and sales through the WeChat channel.

    Globally, retail revenue rose 3 per cent to £478 million (US$613 million) and like-for-like store sales rose 4 per cent during the three months to June 30.

    The figures impressed analysts, outperforming expectations and providing a welcome background to incoming CEO Marco Gobbetti’s first investor presentation today.

    However, Bloomberg columnist Andrea Felsted urged caution, writing that Gobbetti “still has the task of reigniting interest in the tired brand”.

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  • Parkson China closing stores as sales slump

    Parkson China closing stores as sales slump

    Parkson China’s first department store, which opened on Beijing’s Fuxingmen Rd in 1994, is the brand’s last remaining outlet in the capital as slumping sales force it to close outlets across the country.

    Parkson closed its Longhu Beijing Changying Street department store and similar outlets in the cities of Hefei and Zhengzhou at the end of May, according to a Chinese news agency.

    A pioneer foreign investor in China’s retail scene, Malaysia-based Parkson now has 46 department stores across China, down from 60 in 2015.

    Its total sales in China have dropped 8.3 per cent year-on-year from 2013 to last year to RMB14.3 billion (US$2.1 billion), according to the latest annual report of the brand’s Hong Kong-listed business. This reflects an industry-wide trend – a survey of 85 department stores found that 55.3 per cent had lower sales last year, with 15 companies experiencing a drop of more than 10 per cent.

    Parkson joins such domestic chains as Hualian Department Store and Jiuguang Department Store in shuttering stores. Last year alone, Parkson terminated five mainland department stores, including Beijing’s Sun Palace Parkson, which it sold for RMB2.3 billion.

    Shanghai officials last month closed the iconic No. 1 Department Store and Orient Shopping Center for a major renovation. Parkson is also branching out into more modern retail formats with its parent company, Lion Group, opening its first full-fledged shopping centre in China last year. The 230,000 sqm Qingdao Lion Mall offers F&B, entertainment and grocery shopping along with traditional retail fare.

    Parkson also launched a standalone gourmet grocery store, Parkson Supermarket, and a flagship bakery store, Hogan Bakery, in Shanghai last year. The company has even made a belated foray into the mobile e-commerce world by rolling out a shopping app.

    These moves helped the company’s sales pick up by 1.4 per cent in the fourth quarter of last year, bucking a downward trend.

    Meanwhile, Britain’s Marks & Spencer has already closed down all 10 of its Mainland China stores in the face of continuing losses, which the company attributed to low brand awareness and a struggle to grow market share.

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  • JD.com buys into Farfetch fashion site

    JD.com buys into Farfetch fashion site

    Chinese e-commerce giant JD.com has made its largest overseas investment ever, in online Farfetch fashion marketplace.

    JD.com has bought a US$397 million stake in Farfetch, solidifying a partnership that will see its CEO Richard Liu take a place on the UK company’s board. It will also make JD.com one of Farfetch’s largest shareholders.

    This comes amid a push by the luxury-oriented Farfetch to expand in Asia, having raised $110 million in 2014 to support China growth. The new partnership will allow Farfetch to make use of JD.com’s logistics network and marketing systems, alongside online payment technology and social-media resources like its partnership with WeChat.

    An added bonus for the UK fashion marketplace is an increased ability to tackle counterfeit luxury products produced in the region.

    JD.com will also benefit from the partnership, pushing into the luxury market and setting itself apart from rival Alibaba.

    “China is the world’s second-largest luxury market, and we are delighted to have such a respected partner, known for its strict protection of IP, with whom to address Chinese luxury consumers,” says Farfetch founder/CEO Jose Neves.

    Just this month, JD.com launched its high-end delivery service JD Luxury Express, with staff in suits and white gloves delivering packages via electric vehicles directly to customers’ homes.

    Farfetch, which counts France’s Eurazeo, Singapore sovereign wealth fund Temasek and China’s IDG Capital among its investors, was valued at around $1.5 billion in a fundraising last year.

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  • Huawei joins CTO as ICT Sector member

    Huawei joins CTO as ICT Sector member

    Huawei has joined the Commonwealth Telecommunications Organisation (CTO) as an ICT Sector member, the membership category open to the private sector.

    The Commonwealth Telecommunications Organisation (CTO) is the oldest and largest Commonwealth intergovernmental organisation in the ICT field, representing 36 of the member states of the Commonwealth.

    “It gives me great pleasure to welcome Huawei Technologies as one of our members. Members of the CTO greatly benefit from knowledge and experience sharing,” CTO sectretary general Shola Taylor said.

    “Huawei’s membership will help strengthen our organization and its contribution to the use of ICTs for development across the Commonwealth.”

    Huawei president of global government affairs Victor Zhang added that the CTO “is a highly respected international body and it provides a strong platform for both the public and private sectors to exchange best practices related to the promotion and use of ICT innovation in the world today.”

    Full member countries of the CTO include Malaysia, India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and the UK. ICT sector members include the GSMA, Intelsat, BSNL, Vodafone and Facebook.

  • China said to ban use of VPNs

    China said to ban use of VPNs

    China has reportedly instructed the nation’s operators to bar their customers from accessing the internet via VPNs by February in the latest move to tighten controls over internet access.

    State-run operators China Mobile, China Telecom and China Unicom have been ordered to bar their customers from using VPNs to skirt censorship restrictions, citing unnamed people familiar with the matter.

    The government is reportedly moving to remove loopholes enabling internet users to circumvent the so-called Great Firewall of China, the system that blocks access to a range of information sources including foreign social media and news websites.

    Many businesses also use VPNs to view restricted websites, and it is unclear how the new directive will affect multinationals operating within the country.

    If the clampdown is extended to businesses it could potentially discourage businesses from operating in China or even convince them to move their local operations, the report states. But the restrictions seem to be aimed mainly at individual consumers.

    If the restrictions are extended to businesses, it will add to the new regulatory burdens due to be introduced with China’s new Cybersecurity Law, which imposes strict restrictions on the transfer of data overseas for businesses operating in China.

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  • China vehicle sales rebound in June amid price cuts

    China vehicle sales rebound in June amid price cuts

    China’s vehicle sales rebounded in June, the country’s top industry association said, shaking off weakness seen in the previous two months as carmakers grappled with a rollback in tax incentives that drove strong growth last year.

    Total vehicle sales hit 2.17 million in June, up 4.5 percent from a year earlier, while sales for the first half of the year rose 3.8 percent to 13.4 million vehicles, the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers (CAAM) said on Tuesday.

    The rise in sales, which industry insiders said was helped by hefty discounting, lends a sheen to the world’s largest auto market, but growth overall is struggling to keep pace with 2016 when the market grew at its fastest pace in three years.

    Overall vehicle demand in China would likely grow just 1-4 percent this year, mainly because consumers made purchases last year to benefit from lower tax rates, said Yale Zhang, head of Shanghai-based consultancy Automotive Foresight.

    In January, CAAM predicted sales would rise 5 percent this year, slowing from 13.7 percent in 2016, citing the rollback of a tax incentive for small-engine cars and economic pressures. It stuck with that forecast on Tuesday.

    June’s rise, however, marks an improvement from April and May, when vehicle sales fell 2.2 percent and 0.1 percent, respectively, registering two straight months of declines for the first time since 2015.

    Peter Fleet, Ford Motor Co’s Asia-Pacific chief, told Reuters average vehicle transaction prices in China had fallen about 4 percent in the first half of this year against 2016. “We continue to see negative industry pricing in China,” he said.

    Ford is among the foreign brands strong in the small sedan segment that have seen China sales slow this year, others being General Motors Co and Volkswagen AG.

    Buyers in China have shied away since the purchase tax on vehicles with engines of 1.6 liters or below rose to 7.5 percent, from 5 percent, at the start of the year.

    However, there is one bright spot: sales of new-energy vehicles (NEVs) – all-electric battery vehicles and plug-in electric hybrids – that saw a 33 percent bump in June to 59,000 units, the latest CAAM data shows.

    In the first half of this year, sales volume of such NEVs totaled 195,000 vehicles, up 14.4 percent.

    China is the world’s largest market for green energy vehicles, with the government aggressively promoting the segment, including spending billions in subsidies, in a bid to fight intense urban air pollution.

  • Bad news for Japan’s retailers as Chinese tourists cut back on buying

    Bad news for Japan’s retailers as Chinese tourists cut back on buying

    They’re still coming in droves — but no longer buying in spades. After propping up sales for overseas retailers over the past decade with a shopping-driven tourism agenda, Chinese visitors are no longer returning home with suitcases bulging like before.

    A new survey by consultancy Oliver Wyman shows Chinese tourist numbers and holiday expenditure continuing to rise last year, even as shopping during overseas travel dropped 17 percent from a year earlier.

    The average Chinese tourist spent about 6,705 yuan ($986) on shopping when traveling, down from 8,050 yuan in 2015. But overall holiday spending — including on hotels and sightseeing — rose 3.5 percent to 20,317 yuan from 19,635 yuan, according to the survey of 2,000 travelers from the mainland.

    The sea change in spending habits is dealing a blow to retailers from Parisian department stores to Japanese duty-free operators and Hong Kong jewelers, but bigger numbers of wealthier Chinese may create other opportunities for leisure and entertainment operators in popular overseas destinations.

    “Businesses globally have to adjust their strategy to think about how to capture the new Chinese tourist dollar,” said Oliver Wyman’s Shanghai-based partner, Hunter Williams. “It’s less about the outlet mall now and more about the national park.”

    One reason for the change is the easier access to foreign goods in mainland China due to a booming $60 billion cross-border e-commerce market.

    Imported items can now be ordered online and delivered in as quickly as a day, often exempt from taxes levied on goods from store shelves.

    That’s damped the practice of buying overseas for the purpose of reselling locally, and the survey showed such resales falling to 3 percent of shopping expenditures from 8 percent in 2015.

    Chinese outbound spending still ranks highest in the world. In 2016, travelers from the country spent $261 billion, a fifth of the global total, up from $249.8 billion in 2015, according to the World Tourism Organization.

    But the portion contributed by shopping has fallen to 33 percent of overall travel expenditure, from 41 percent in 2015, the Oliver Wyman survey showed.

    Chinese consumers no longer need to travel overseas to stock up on items from Playtex bras to Christian Dior lipsticks and Blue Nile diamond rings, which are now available on online portals run by firms like Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. and JD.com Inc. With foreign brands increasingly using the internet to reach Chinese buyers, foot traffic to malls and outlet stores in popular overseas destinations is slumping.

    Duty-free retailer Laox Co. reported a 33 percent fall in revenue for 2016 as Chinese tourists spent less, while U.S retailer Macy’s Inc. is shutting 14 percent of its stores to stem sales declines.

    Luxury houses like LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton SE and Cie Financiere Richemont SA and brewer Kirin Holdings Co. have pointed to sales pressures from fewer Chinese shoppers visiting stores globally, said Bloomberg Intelligence retail analyst Catherine Lim.

    The survey also showed that more Chinese tourists are traveling with children and spouses rather than going alone or with friends. That could benefit destinations that offer unique leisure experiences or entertainment options, said Oliver Wyman’s Williams.

    “The number of Chinese tourists is still rising rapidly and at quicker pace than their overall spending,” he said. “This should give industry players some pause to think about how to make up for the loss of shopping-related spending through volume.”

  • AirAsia’s Shenzhen-Langkawi route starts Aug 9

    AirAsia’s Shenzhen-Langkawi route starts Aug 9

    AirAsia is expanding its connectivity by introducing direct flights from Shenzhen, China, to Langkawi starting Aug 9. Chief executive officer Aireen Omar said the concept of low-cost airline was introduced in Shenzhen with the aim of enabling more people to fly.

    “Now people in the Guangdong province are well-connected to the world through our extensive flight network of over 120 destinations in Asia, Australia, New Zealand and the United States,” she said in a statement.

    Since its inaugural flight in 2007, the airline has flown 4.3 million guests in and out of Shenzhen, bringing in high local and international passenger traffic into the city.

    Celebrating its tenth anniversary flying into Shenzhen, China, AirAsia was now offering 35 weekly flights from Shenzhen to South-East Asia.

    The average load factor for this year for the three routes from Shenzhen recorded a performance of over 85%, placing AirAsia as the leading foreign airline, in terms of flight frequency and passengers flown into Shenzhen.

    To celebrate the occasion, AirAsia is offering all-in fares as low as RM256 from Kuala Lumpur to Shenzhen and RM257 from Kota Kinabalu to Shenzhen.

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  • GAC China to provide upstream logistics services for car imports

    GAC China to provide upstream logistics services for car imports

    Parallel car importer Shandong High Speed Qingdao West Coastport has appointed GAC China its upstream logistics provider. Under the one-year contract, it will handle the receiving and checking, container loading and freight services of an estimated 3,000-4,000 cars exported from Hamburg and Rotterdam to Qingdao and Hong Kong every year.

    Simon Xu, managing director of GAC China, is optimistic about the growth of that market and the opportunities that it will generate: “China was ranked as the world’s number one automotive market for the eighth year last year, with a double-digit total sales growth. We are also seeing a rising trend for the direct import of European cars into the country.

    “Our partnership with Shandong High Speed marks the beginning of a new chapter for GAC China, that will allow us to leapfrog into a new territory in the contract logistics market for fully assembled automobiles.”

    GAC China’s contract logistics team led by manager Tyrone Liu will work closely with GAC’s partners in Hamburg and counterparts at GAC Rotterdam to ensure the safe and prompt delivery of the vehicles.

    Chengguang Du, general manager of Shangdong High Speed Qingdao West Coastport says: “When looking for a logistics partner with global resources and extensive experience to handle the shipment of our high value automobiles, GAC came to our mind. We know GAC as a well-known brand in the logistics industry, but it was only when we flew to Hamburg and saw the facility and operations with our own eyes that we were fully convinced.”

    GAC China has already handled the first shipment under the contract – two Range Rover HSEs from Germany to Qingdao, China.

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  • Stripe strikes global partnerships with China’s Alipay, WeChat Pay

    Stripe strikes global partnerships with China’s Alipay, WeChat Pay

    Silicon Valley startup Stripe has partnered with digital payment providers Alipay and WeChat Pay to enable merchants using its platform globally to accept payments from hundreds of millions of Chinese consumers.

    Starting Sunday, the partnerships will allow online merchants using Stripe to integrate the ability for Chinese users to pay with Alipay and WeChat Pay on their websites, the company said.

    Stripe hopes the integration will help boost its revenues by allowing clients to tap China’s vast consumer market, where credit cards account for only a fraction of online spending, the company said.

    Alipay is the flagship payment service of Ant Financial, the financial affiliate of major Chinese ecommerce company Alibaba Group and has over 520 million users. WeChat Pay has more than 600 million users and is the payment app of entertainment and social network firm Tencent Holdings.

    “If you are an internet business this unlocks a new vast customer base,” John Collison, Stripe’s president and co-founder, said in an interview. In turn, Chinese consumers will have expanded choice as to which international online merchants they can purchase products and services from, he added.

    Founded by brothers John and Patrick Collison in 2010, Stripe provides technology that enables merchants in 25 countries to accept payments online. It charges a fee on each payments transactions processed through its platform.

    “If we can help a business double their sales, then it doubles our revenue from that business,” Collison said.

    The partnership coincides with the company’s launch in Hong Kong.

    One of the most valuable venture-backed financial technology companies globally, Stripe has risen in popularity among software developers and online merchants because of its ease of use.

    It is among the cohort of young fintech companies seeking to reinvent the payments landscape by taking better advantage of digital technologies to offer more user-friendly financial services and products.

    It had previously partnered with Alipay to enable only the U.S. merchants on its platform to integrate the Chinese payment service. The new global partnership builds on that experience.

    “Demand for services from Chinese consumers is at all-time high,” Souheil Badran, president of Alipay for North America, said in an interview. The new partnerships will connect them to hundreds of thousands of Stripe-powered businesses around the world, he added.

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  • Ant Financial aims for ‘cashless’ cities in China

    Ant Financial aims for ‘cashless’ cities in China

    Alibaba’s financial arm Ant Financial is looking to create more “cashless” cities across China, with the latest agreement inked with Tianjin municipality in North China.

    The city-wide “cashless” campaign pushed by the e-commerce giant is the fourth installment to hit China, following similar initiatives in Hangzhou — where Alibaba is based — followed by Wuhan and Fuzhou.

    As with the other “cashless” cities, Tianjin residents will soon be able to pay for an array services and goods using their mobiles when paying bus fares and medical bills, as well as school tuition and social security.

    It will be officially rolled out by the end of 2017, as reported by the China Economic Times.

    However, going “cashless” does not mean money will become obsolete. It will simply allow customers to decide on the way of payment, Jing Xiaodong, the company’s CEO, said

    Tianjin was chosen, said Jiang, as it has a good foundation for Internet Plus to make it the first cashless city in the north.

    With a resident population of 155 million, sone 69 million are real-name registered Alipay users, according to China Economic Times. The city ranks 10th nationwide by mobile payment activities.

    Ant Financial was a leading sponsor of a cashless alliance set up in April. The company earlier vowed to make mobile payment accessible in the whole country in the coming five years.

    2017 has proven a busy year for Alibaba. Last week, the world’s largest e-commerce platform operator said it plans to enter Macau with a bevy of products and services. Last month, the group acquired an 18% stake in Lianhua Supermarket. Before that, the Chinese giant said it had invested US$1 billion in Southeast Asian online retailer Lazada Group, increasing its stake to more than 80%.

    Looking ahead, said that in fiscal 2018 sales may increase by up to 49 per cent, 10 percentage points higher than estimates.

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  • Chinese Travelers Spend More But Shop Less

    Chinese Travelers Spend More But Shop Less

    The number of trips by outbound Chinese travelers is expected to reach 150 million this year, but while average trip spend is on the rise (up 3.5 percent 2015-2016), surprisingly shopping spend declined both in absolute and relative terms, to 33 percent of trip spend in the same period, according to a report released by Oliver Wyman, a global consulting firm.

    The findings of the report, ‘Prepare for Turbulence: The Chinese Traveler of Today and Tomorrow,’reveal that shopping dropped from the second biggest motivation for traveling to third, behind sightseeing, recreation and entertainment. The decline was mainly driven by decreased shopping for resale – ‘daigou’ – which fell from 8 percent to 3 percent year-over-year.

    “Chinese Traveler continue to shift their spending towards more meaningful experiences such as exquisite dining, extraordinary cultural journeys and even adventurous sports,” said Hunter Williams, Oliver Wyman partner and author of the report. “At the same time, cross-border e-commerce has grown rapidly, overseas travel has democratized, and there is greater availability of products at home, meaning there is less need for buying overseas for resale”

    Travelers who rank shopping as the main reason to travel are generally from lower income brackets than those who rank shopping as the second and third motivations to travel. Therefore, the most “intent shoppers” are not the biggest spenders in either shopping or total travel spending

    For example retail spend as proportion of overall trip spend in the United Kingdom went down from 42 percent to 33 percent despite the weakness of the pound following Brexit. A particular fall was seen in daigou spend, which dropped from RMB1,800 to RMB1,000 per person from 2015-2016. Similarly, retail spend in the United States dropped from 41 percent to 28 percent with only 5 percent of respondents ranking shopping as number one reason to go to the country.

    The report reveals the major shifts in the tastes of Chinese travelers, who are becoming more independent as they become more sophisticated. “Cookie cutter” holidays have greatly declined in popularity as a result – fewer than 1 in 40 holidays were mostly planned by travel agents in 2016 vs. more than 1 in 7 in 2015. They are also staying longer in distant locations, traveling more with their families and even spending less on shopping. They now travel more with immediate family and especially children, resulting in growth in average group size from 2.9 to 3.1 travelers per group.

    In terms of travel duration, Chinese Travelers are making shorter trips to Asia and significantly longer trips to long-haul destinations. Hong Kong remains the most popular destination despite seeing a 3 percent year-over-year drop in Chinese visitors in 2016, with the city appearing to be poised for a comeback with nearly seven times as many respondents saying their impression of the city had improved (55%) rather than worsened (8%), and the majority perceiving it as “good value”.

    South Korea has slipped from its position as the top destination, seeing Chinese visitor numbers decrease 3 percent year-over-year in 2016 and a slump in popularity with Traveler planning to visit falling from 31% in 2015 to 17% last year. In contrast, Japan has continued to rise, again being the fastest growing destination and now also the most desired, with 4 percent year-over-year growth and 29 percent of respondents planning to visit in 2017.

    Interestingly, the report also reveals that twice as many trips were made domestically last year compared to 2015, with over 90 percent of respondents making at least one domestic tourism trip in the past 12 months. On the consumption front, they are much less interested in shopping when traveling domestically and also more price conscious, with 47 percent of respondents seeking value/price compared with 40 percent for overseas destinations.

    With long-haul destinations becoming more popular among Chinese tourists, Oliver Wyman expects that a greater proportion of spend will be allocated to accommodation, dining and entertainment, while shopping spend as a percentage of overall travel spend is likely to continue to decline moving forward.

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  • Indonesian embassy promotes Balinese culinary in Beijing

    Indonesian embassy promotes Balinese culinary in Beijing

    The Embassy of the Republic of Indonesia in Beijing and Hotel Conrad has promoted Balinese cuisine to the guests staying at one of the five star hotels in the capital city of China from July 6 to 16, 2017.

    “This is the second event this year,” Indonesian Ambassador to China, Soegeng Rahardjo, stated in a press statement received by Antara here on Friday.

    To support the event titled A Taste of Indonesia, Conrad Beijing presented three chefs from Bali, namely I Made Semawan, Agus Feritude, and Agus Surya.

    They serve Balinese dishes of chicken, pork, fried rice, and satay, which tasted exactly the same as the ones found in the island.

    “With the growing recognition of Indonesias tradition, culinary taste, and beauty, it is expected that the number of foreign tourists visiting Indonesia will continue to increase,” the ambassador stated.

    The Embassy will continue to hold such culinary promotional events by involving several star hotels.

    Earlier, a similar event was also held by the Embassy in cooperation with Westin Beijing in mid-March.

    This year, the Ministry of Tourism expects 2.5 million tourists from China.

    In previous year, tourists from mainland China visiting Indonesia reached 1.5 million people. They still see Bali as a major tourist destination in the country.

    Garuda Indonesia has provided direct flights to Denpasar from Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Chengdu. Several Chinese airlines also provide direct flights to Denpasar.

  • Alibaba launches low-cost voice assistant amid AI drive

    Alibaba launches low-cost voice assistant amid AI drive

    The Chinese device costs significantly less than counterparts by Amazon and Google. China’s Alibaba Group Holding Ltd launched on Wednesday a cut-price voice assistant speaker, similar to Amazon.com Inc’s “Echo”, its first foray into artificially intelligent home devices.

    The “Tmall Genie”, named after the company’s e-commerce platform Tmall, costs 499 yuan ($73.42), significantly less than western counterparts by Amazon and Alphabet Inc’s Google, which range from $120 to $180.

    These devices are activated by voice commands to perform tasks, such as checking calendars, searching for weather reports, changing music or control smart-home devices, using internet connectivity and artificial intelligence.

    China’s top tech firms have ambitions to become world leaders in artificial intelligence as companies, including Alibaba and Amazon, increasingly compete for the same markets.

    Baidu, China’s top search engine, which has invested in an artificial intelligence lab with the Chinese government, recently launched a device based on its own siri-like “Duer OS” system.

    The Tmall Genie is currently programmed to use Mandarin as its language and will only be available in China. It is activated when a recognized user says “Tmall Genie” in Chinese.

    In a streamed demonstration on Wednesday, engineers ordered the device to buy and deliver some Coca Cola, play music, add credit to a phone and activate a smart humidifier and TV.

    The device, which comes in black and white, can also be tasked with purchasing goods from the company’s Tmall platform, a function similar to Amazon’s Echo device.

    Alibaba has invested heavily in offline stores and big data capabilities in an effort to capitalize on the entire supply chain as part of its retail strategy, increasingly drawing comparisons with similar strategies adopted by Amazon.

    It recently began rolling out unstaffed brick-and-motor grocery and coffee shops, using QR codes that users can scan to complete payment on its Alipay app, which has over 450 million users. Amazon launched a similar concept of stores in December.

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  • The Alibaba Group is ready to do business in Macau

    The Alibaba Group is ready to do business in Macau

    Alibaba Group Holding Limited has had its application for trademark protection accepted in Macau, enabling the Chinese e-commerce giant to enter the MSAR with a series of products.

    Brands Ant Star, Ant Star Bank, Alimebot, 阿里蜜，星匯，星安，智惠，星匯銀行，智惠銀行, are now able to create and commercialise in Macau products ranging from newspapers and magazines to credit and debit cards, scientific and nautical instruments, file sharing software and GPS equipment. But also advertising, execution and supervision of loyalty programmes and incentives, business consulting to traffic optimisation of websites, large warehouse retail services or even insurance, financial and monetary businesses.

    In total, many hundreds of products and services that the company – based in Hangzhou and founded in 1999 by Jack Ma and Peng Lei – is now allowed to conduct here.

    With over 50,000 employees, Alibaba provides consumer-to-consumer, business-to-consumer and business-to-business sales services via web portals.

    Recently, the Chinese giant invested US$1 billion (MOP8 billion) in Southeast Asian online retailer Lazada Group increasing its stake to more than 80 per cent and making is presence even stronger in the region.

    According to Forbes magazine, over the past year Ma has spent more than 800 hours flying to dozens of countries, meeting business leaders and heads of state to introduce his grand vision: small businesses from all corners of the world trading freely and securely on the Alibaba platform.

    Highly reported Jack Ma’s ambition is to see his company reach the US$1 trillion mark in gross merchandise value by 2020.

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