Citation heavily needed for that claim.
What? This runs counter to basically all of human history and the rise of open/free trade. People should produce what they are best at and trade accordingly, which optimizes workflow for all market participants. Central planning of economies works exceptionally inefficiently and leads to imbalanced products available. Just ask the USSR and the availability of food.
Walmart, Amazon are seeing resistance because they could potentially put thousand of small business owners out of work.
Boeing, Intel, Corning are doing great business in India because there are no local alternatives. I've even seen automotive lifts for auto repair shops with Made in USA in red-white-blue decals at local repair shops.
Companies like Visa and Mastercard will see protectionist moves by the government as India goes digital 'cause there is no reason for a foreign duopoly to corner the huge market in India.
But Alibaba isn’t really Amazon’s main competitor, they are much more B2B than B2C, it’s only when you throw in TMall or Taobao that comparisons become more apt. When I was living in Beijing, my wife and I never used Alibaba, it was always JD.com or some other consumer oriented site, and even Amazon sometimes (though mostly because the Microsoft China trade Union kept giving us gift cards as a kickback).
Taobao is pretty amazing. But slightly hard to explain. It is like Amazon, eBay, Shopify, Wish and more in one.
You mean JD. You could just say "JD" instead of the vague statement.
Alibaba is pretty big here in Romania. One could say that that happens because Amazon isn't officially present on the market, which is true, but neither Alibaba is officially launched, people use it because the stuff on their website is really, really cheap and the cost vs what-you-get ratio is pretty reasonable. I also wonder how come Alibaba isn't bigger in some Western European markets.
According to him, his higher ups hated the idea of Ali Express turning into "Cheap Chinese Goods Site®." Just as all Chinese "old boss" types, they had that unhealthy obsession with chasing "high profile" image in everything.
They were fuming about them not being able to enter American market, and that no proper Western brand wanted to play with them.
Few people know, but until Alibaba bought Lazada. Russian market was making Alibaba more profit than all other foreign markets combined, despite them spending zero on marketing there, while American market was eating tenths of megabucks of advertising spendings, and not making a dime.
What is the average delivery in days when shopping from Alibaba? Do you get huge delivery fees akin to Amazon and eBay?
I'm pretty unhappy with Amazon and eBay for shopping in Bulgaria and I'm considering alternatives.
It's not for the same-day delivery crowd, that's for sure, afaik it's from a few days to a week or two. But, like I said, the price is sometimes so low that for a lot of people it's worth it.
> Do you get huge delivery fees akin to Amazon and eBay?
Not as far as I know. There used to be a loophole (or maybe the customs people were too lazy to enforce the law) where you didn't pay VAT for purchases that were not that high but that has changed lately, which added approximately 20% to the costs. Even so, because the prices are comparatively speaking so low it doesn't make that much of a difference.
Of course, I wouldn't advise trying to purchase any branded things or luxury stuff from Alibaba but you can find pretty nice things in there at impossible to beat prices if you don't care that much about the label.
I wouldn't go for almost any online store if I look up luxury items anyway. ;)
But when you want to get 4 cables of this kind, 2 cables of that other kind, 3 LED arrays, and 2 books -- which total $35 -- it feels pretty awful to actually have to pay about $65 due to delivery fees and whatnot.
So I am thinking that for all those smaller purchases I'll just go for Alibaba.
(BTW I also noticed our customs caught up on lower-cost items' VAT and it's not pleasant.)
Appreciate the feedback.
Because jd.com will never get the same 3 million delivery guys working 80 hours a week at around USD $1,000/month.
Why are local players very strong?
* Regulatory capture
* Government promotion of internal services
* IP theft from western countries
How about, all of the above?
Simply stating something likely done by Alibaba, but not necessarily true not only adds nothing to the conversation, but detracts from the journey to the truth. If we accept his statement as is, then you may as well accept anything anti-China simply based on the fact that it is anti-China. But doing so of course would be openly declaring yourself as an agenda-based biased actor.
So, I'll sing praises to China when they do something praiseworthy, but by god I'm not trusting a statistic or a press brief coming out of that place, and no-one else with half a brain should either.
For example, when China announces they have landed on the far side of the moon, how exactly does their totalitarian governance impact the accuracy of this press brief? Is it not more beneficial for your own sake to pass on judgment (or at least defer on your judgment) based on the particular event over what their goverment is like?
Regarding China's moon landing, their being a totalitarian government with a propagandistic focus matters a great deal. A lot of bad science has been foisted upon the world by similar regimes - look up Lamarckian inheritance in the USSR for instance if you haven't heard of it.
In this case though, we've got pictures, we know the rocket launched, etc, etc.
But more seriously, does China not engage in mass censorship and re-education camps?
Do angry townsfolk not flash mob foreigners and beat them up?
Last June was there not an expose on how massively Chinese provinces are misrepresenting the reality of their situations?
Did their president not ban Winnie the Pooh?
I've not said anything that hasn't been in the news.
Judging them based on that, based on those consistent and continued offenses informs that bias rather strongly.
Edit:
Here, lets put it this way. I don't trust the Chinese government, or anything tied to the Chinese government, because they've consistently lived down to my expectations. Read what they say, find out what actually happened, and eventually the default assumption HAS to change from "Trust but Verify" to just "Verify".
> Local players in China are very strong with likes of Alibaba
Funding a local competitor is not interference?
Chinese Government Has A Huge "Stake" In Alibaba
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jaysomaney/2015/10/18/chinese-g...
Amazon in China was getting big in second tier cities underserved by big ecommerce brands.
Serving second tier cities make a lot of sense today when competition in tier 1 cities requires more ad spending than in America or Europe
One of the best things about capitalism is that nobody is safe.
Within Beijing/Shanghai/Guangzhou, I'm sure that's true. Can Alibaba get a package delivered to Tibet in two days? Really this is just expressing the fact that effectively all of China's industrialized economy is concentrated in three urban centers.
And while they might not be industrial centers, there are tens of millions of middle-class Chinese in places like Chongqing, Wuhan, Nanjing who presumably order stuff online sometimes.
And of course these local players are in no way supported or promoted by the government, right?
Other brands too. You don’t see the government changing the laws so Li-Ning can beat Nike.
One whiff of the billions in potential revenue and the marketeers go into a rutting frenzy. It's only when they're doing the inevitable follow-up walk of shame that they realize what they've done.
"In traditional China this ritual was performed by commoners making requests to the local magistrate, by the emperor to the shrine of Confucius, or by foreign representatives appearing before the emperor to establish trade relations." https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/kowtow
Apparently this is a controversial revelation to some of you:
https://blog.hiddenharmonies.org/2010/12/23/my-pet-peeve-rac...
Or since that example apparently goes over some of your heads, it’s like how some of you only use “bruh” and “yo” and “what’s good” around me, your black coworker and no one else.
In fact, it's been so universal I never even made the connection or wondered about the etymology. Finding out that it's a loan word from Cantonese is something I learned due to this thread.
Your Mexican example would be using (I assume?) the Spanish of whatever word would work just as well in English, and I've personally used and seen people use words like "bruh" and "yo" with lots of different people. In fact, where I'm from "bruh" is a very typical "white" thing to say.
Saying “kowtow”, “bruh”, “what’s good”. Not a problem.
Someone who never says “bruh” or “what’s good” suddenly talking like they’re extras in a Migos music video to their black coworker is not cool.
Saying kowtow, but only in reference to Asians and always using “appease” in other contexts, is not cool.
Yeah I know HN is mostly white guys who squirm at the idea of race and think “I don’t see color” is an ok thing to say, but if you’re not going to at least try and take someone's arguments for full value, even if you don’t agree, don’t even respond, it’s insulting otherwise.
This kind of useless deflection is insulting to basic intelligence.
There is absolutely zero point in trying to mollify the Chinese government.