I know there are some users on this forum that are from China. I’m wondering whether someone would be able to answer the following question:
How different is e-commerce in China from e-commerce in the rest of the world - in practice?
Reading some articles I’ve found on the web, seems that Chinese market is far more focused on the so called social commerce for example (WeChat Store), and Google is responsible for less than 3% of search engine queries. So, even if you are running an e-commerce business somewhere in the world (but not in China), and even if it’s not blocked by the Great Firewall, you have chances close to zero to be discovered by a client from China.
Yes, Google is blocked by China goverment. So in China, people use Baidu (China’s local search engine) to search something. Baidu is typical commercial company. If you give them enough money, they will put your company name on the top one when someone want to search something.
Many people hate Baidu, but we don’t have other choice. Baidu is the largest search engine company in China, its position in China is just like Google in the world.
China’s e-commerce market is occupied by two companies. One is Jingdong, its business model is just like Amazon, they sell every kinds products on their platform, and also let other companies to sell their own products on Jingdong’s platform.
Another company is Taobao, its business model is different with Amazon, it just provide a flatform to others. Everyone can sell his products on this platform, and everyone can buy something on this flatform. No rent, no fee, it’s a free e-market for everyone. Taobao earn money by Alipay. When you buy something on Taobao, you give money to Alipay, when you received the goods, then Alipay give the money to vendor. Everyday, there are huge floating money on Ali’s account. So, even they don’t sell anything, they are still a very rich company.
Ali is more like a finacial company now. They lend money to the seller, they also lend money to the buyer, that’s not free. They also sell fund to others. They own the world’s largest money fund. They even want sell stocks, but China’s goverment don’t give them license or permission. China’s goverment is worried about Ali.
Yes, Taobao and Alibaba are two websites, both belonged to Ali Group company. Taobao is for Chinese, Alibaba is in English and for foreigners.
Even Taobao is the largest e-commercial website in China, but I don’t like it too much. Because their products’ quality is not guaranteed, some product’s price is incredible low, there are too many choices, you have to make a decision on so many choices. I don’t like that.
I like Jingdong more. They promiss their products are all from their real vendors. They promiss their goods can be delivered within 24 hours. Most of time, they kept their promiss.1
With blockchain based file storage systems such as FileCoin for example it is possible to build search engines, eCommerce platforms and all kinds of other applications that can’t be blocked by any one central organization such as government agencies. So blockchain technology will be ultimately be the end of centralized governments.