As of March 2010, the number of users registered on Alipay, Alibaba’s homegrown electronic payment system, exceeded 300 million, and the long-standing issue of the legality of this third-party capital management system is expected to be resolved with the Administrative Measures for Payment Services of Non-financial Institutions due to be issued by the People’s Bank of China.

Logistics has been called the “last stumbling block to e-commerce.” At the end of 2009, some express delivery companies targeted Taobao with a concerted price hike. The affair brought home to Alibaba and Taobao the urgency of sorting out the logistics chain and coming up with a “greater delivery” strategy. In June, Taobao officially announced the launch of its Logistics Po platform, which aims to provide a one-stop sourcing and delivery service for e-store keepers.

Breaking Records, Creating Jobs

When Yu Jing first opened her e-store, the C2C platform Taobao and its parent company Alibaba were on a new wave of business expansion.

In June this year, Taobao launched a joint online shopping service in partnership with Yahoo! JAPAN that links Japanese consumers with Chinese merchants via the “China Mall” channel, and Chinese consumers with Japanese merchants through the “Taojapan” portal. The joint campaign has generated the world’s largest online market, giving 250 million consumers access to 450 million items.

About three weeks later, Alibaba announced its acquisition of Vendio, a multi-channel e-commerce provider with 11 years’ e-tailing experience and annual turnover in excess of US $2 billion. The acquisition guarantees Alibaba access to over 80,000 American merchants who do business via Vendio, gives access to a global market via its new portal Aliexpress, and helps Chinese-made products reach their American retail market destination.

Like Alibaba, many other Chinese e-commerce enterprises have found a foothold amid fierce global competition, among them Tencent and Ctrip. The vigor of e-commerce in China has won favor with international venture capital. In the first half of 2010, 360Buy, Vancl, Dhgate, Redbaby and Letao all announced news of VC investment. 360Buy set a new Chinese B2C fundraising record with new investment funds of US $150 million.

The fast growth of e-commerce has given a spur to the job market. Apart from e-store startups, new job patterns have emerged, such as “online inter-dealer broker” and “Taobao third-party product promoter.” By April 2010, Taobao had helped create 3.02 million jobs within its industrial chain.

Some insiders believe that the new commercial era ushered in by e-commerce is a great opportunity for China to become the frontrunner in this field.