China pushed the US from the 1st place!

It's official! China is the largest internet population in the world, according to a recent Chinese research. Since the creation of the Internet no other nation could beat the USA in this unofficial contest. With its 220 million online users the growth opportunity for a gigantic Asian market is unlimited. According to the China Internet Research Center in Beijing 55 million internet users did their shopping on line in 2007 with the total sales of 59.4 billion yuan ($8.25 billion). This is almost double than the overall online sales conducted in 2006. The research predicts that by 2011 the overall online spending in China will reach 406 billion yuan.

With its exiting opportunities for e-commerce on the Chinese market, the level of online spending stays low - only at 0.64% of all retail purchases. This mostly happens as the average consumer is concerned about security of online payments and low quality products. The China Internet Research Center comments: "The purchasing of fake goods, credit card theft and other related problems emerge in an endless stream".

The other problems for Chinese e-commerce were marked as the small number of credit card users and poor arbitration procedures. "The online payment is no longer a technical problem for the Chinese portals, but a problem of confidence, as consumers continue to be wary of settlement systems via the Internet," Liu Bin, an Internet analyst at BDA China.

                                        Marianna, reporter of Ecommerce Journal