The Chinese ecommerce giant Alibaba is to open offices in France and Germany.
It aims to encourage more French and German businesses of all sizes to sell their products in China via Alibaba's Taobao and Tmall platforms, describing itself as a “gateway to China”.
It already opened offices in the UK and Italy for the same reason earlier this year.
Alibaba is increasingly focusing on cross-border ecommerce as a way to get ahead of its rival JD. JD recently opened an office in the US in an attempt to facilitate cross-border ecommerce between the two countries.
The Chinese cross-border ecommerce market is predicted to grow to over 200 million people in the next five years, when it is expected to be worth around 250 billion US dollars.
