Business bets on continued shopping surge

E-commerce has changed, and will continue to change, the landscape of China's domestic consumption market, reports Meng Jing.

Jack Ma, one of the feistiest business gurus, who has built China's largest e-commerce conglomerate from scratch, wagered 100 million yuan ($16.5 million) with one of the country's richest real estate tycoons in December 2012.

Ma,founder and chairman of Alibaba Group Holding Ltd, made the sensational bet on a China Central Television program with Wang Jianlin, head of Dalian Wanda Group, saying that online shopping would account for about half of the country's retail sales in 2020.Wang, one of the largest mall developers in China, bet that online consumption wouldn't increase that fast.