Liang Chunxiao, senior researcher at Alibaba Group said at the 2012 Netrepreneur Summit on Sept 9 that e-commerce services providers’ innovations and market potential would see visible improvements in 2012. The research center of Alibaba Group predicted that by 2015, e-commerce services could earn profits of 13 trillion yuan ($2050 billion).

According to the 2011 China E-commerce Services Report released by the Alibaba research center, 90 percent of online retail in the country is done through e-commerce platforms. In 2011, e-commerce services earned 120 billion yuan, supporting e-commerce trade of more than 3,000 billion yuan.

Taobao Marketplace, one of the biggest Chinese online shopping websites similar to eBay and Amazon, held 59,000 service providers trade on its platform by February 2012, 7.32 times over the same period in 2011.

Economist Wu Jinglian said that e-commerce has become a new leading strategic industry and China could have the largest and top-level e-commerce services in the world.

Edited by Lin Hong and Tom Mc Gregor