AP
Ge Hongjun started a shop on Taobao.com — China’s answer to eBay — as a class project but he now sees it as his ticket to becoming a retail magnate after graduation.
Taobao’s growing popularity has captured the imagination of students like Ge, but also giants like Dell, Uniqlo, Procter and Gamble, and Chinese firms seeking to step from the shadows after years of manufacturing for US and European labels.
The e-commerce site, whose name means “treasure hunt” in Chinese, is a source for everything from turkeys to televisions, with 80.9 billion yuan (11.8 billion dollars) in 2009 first-half sales.
That is double the same period last year and higher than Amazon.com‘s over the same period.
