January was not good for China Imports & Exports

According to latest stats of import & export, China still in decline for the third straight month in January 2009 . Imports volume eased 43.1 percent to US51.34 billion while exports volume decreased 17.5 percent year-on-year to US$90.45 billion.

The total included US$27.93 billion in trade between China and the European Union, down 18.7 percent; 22.25 billion dollars in trade between China and the United States, down 15.2 percent; and US$14.5 in trade between China and Japan, down 28 percent.

Over 50 million online suppliers bring more jobs in China

IDC China, an internationally renowned market research company, released a white paper on China's e-commerce service sector recently.

The paper pointed out that, despite the impact of the financial crisis, China's e-commerce service sector, represented by businesses such as Alibaba.com, will continue to perform a high-speed growth in the next five years and will create a large number of employment opportunities.

According to IDC's estimates, the overall e-commerce transaction volume in 2008 totaled 1.951 trillion yuan, of which B2B (Business to Business) e-commerce volume maintained a growth rate of around 20%. In 2008, B2C (Business to Customer) and C2C (Customer to Customer) e-commerce transaction volumes maintained a growth rate of around 30%.

This trend was in sharp contrast to a sluggish macroeconomic environment and depressed market confidence. According to IDC's forecasts, China's total e-commerce transaction volume will reach 2.51 trillion yuan in 2009 and 3.22 trillion in 2010. This means maintaining a high-speed annual growth rate of 28%, making e-commerce the most impressive highlight of the Chinese economy in the next two years.

The white paper pointed out that, third party e-commerce platforms have effectively boosted the e-commerce development of small and medium enterprises (SMEs). Among a number of SMEs surveyed, 25.04% indicated that for every one yuan they invested in top e-commerce platforms, they received an average return of 234 yuan in transaction volume.

Alibaba.com Stock Price Dived 85%

HANGZHOU, Oct 14, 2008 (SinoCast China IT Watch via COMTEX) -- EBAY Quote Chart News PowerRating -- The world's top online shopping Web site eBay Inc. (Nasdaq: EBAY Quote Chart News PowerRating) announced a job cutting of 1,600 employees on October 6, 2008. Meanwhile, Chinese e-commerce leader Alibaba Group started a worldwide recruitment. Only a day later, Alibaba declared that CNY 5 billion would be inputted into affiliated C2C site Taobao.com in the future five years.

However, the stock price of Alibaba's B2B affiliate Alibaba.com Ltd. (SEHK: 1688) went down all the way, and closed at HKD 5.75 on October 9, diving 85% from the peak price of a year ago.
An unknown insider points out Alibaba's recruitment plan is to hide its real intention to reduce the stafftrimmer.

On September 22, an Internet user posted an article at his blog, saying that he was notified of news that Alibaba will cut more jobs after the National Day holiday, including veterans who have worked at the company for a long time.

Previously, on September 4, Alibaba suddenly announced a merger of website ads trade market Alimama into Taobao.com, shortly after which Alimama's 600-people team was largely reduced. The layoff seems to prove the former saying of Jack Ma, founder, board chairman, CEO of Alibaba Group, and board chairman of Alibaba.com, that an Internet winter is coming in China.
At the end of September, Alibaba posted the newest job listings on its site, recruiting talents engaged in sales, technology, and other fields. The recruitment will last from the fourth quarter of 2008 to July of 2009, revealed Peng Lei, chief human resources officer of Alibaba.

The winter in the IT industry caused the stock price drop and market cap shrink of Alibaba.com. Analysts reach consensus that Alibaba's recession was attributable to Chinese Yuan appreciation, energy and raw material markup, credit crunch, capital market downturn, and recent financial crisis in the US, which forced the company's B2B customers to lessen inputs in Internet promotions.

Alibaba has taken actions to consolidate affiliated resources through the mergers of Alimama into Taobao.com and China Yahoo into daily life information site Koubei.com. However, the whole market largely dragged down the company's performance, commented both Essence Securities Co., Ltd. and Nomura Securities Co., Ltd.

Not only Alibaba, but also other Internet companies, are all busy launching recruitment plans, including NetEase.com Inc. (Nasdaq: NTES), Baidu.com Inc. (Nasdaq: BIDU), and Tencent Holdings Limited (SEHK: 0700), even online game giant Shanda Interactive Entertainment Ltd. (Nasdaq: SNDA), which hold job fairs one after another at universities and colleges.

Meanwhile, foreign IT companies are carrying out layoffs. Besides eBay, Sun Microsystems Inc. and Nortel Networks Corporation (TSX: NT and NYSE: NT) respectively cut 2,500 and 2,100 jobs in the past year. HP, to acquire Electronic Data Systems (EDS), needs to reduce 25,000 posts, and Google Inc. (Nasdaq: GOOG) cut 300 jobs for Internet advertising site DoubleClick.

Alibaba & Softbank partner to develop clothing online market

Alibaba, a widely reputed and well known Chinese business-to-business (B2B) company operating through online media, has formed a joint venture with Softbank of Japan to develop e-commerce market in the country.

A branch of Alibaba was already setup in Japan last November but it was only this year that a joint venture with Sofbank could materialize.

While Alibaba would make an initial investment of US $20 million and hold 35 percent stake in the joint-venture, Softbank would claim a 65 percent share.

Garment enterprises in the country are looking forward to this joint venture as a unique advantage in developing e-commerce. Most of them believe that the entry of Alibaba.com into Japanese market would bring about major changes in the existing apparel-e-commerce business.

The new company will take over operations of the existing Japanese-language website of Alibaba.com linking all the small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in Japan with buyers and suppliers around the world.

As such, Alibaba.com Japan will aim at catering to Japanese business enterprises with a complete database of suppliers available online from China and around the world. Besides, this joint venture will also help Alibaba.com, Japan to localize its contents and upgrade its services to improve the user experience for Japanese SMEs.

Expert analysis show that Japan has more than 4 million SMEs which together account for 25 percent of the country’s export value and about 63 percent of its import value. Moreover, since 2006, China has replaced US to become the largest trading partner of Japan and with this recent endeavor taken by Alibaba and Softbank, not only will bilateral trade get enhanced further, it will also open up new trade channels worldwide.