Last weekend, the China Retail Summit was held in Shanghai. Retail giants including Wangfujing Department Store, Gome, Wal-Mart, Suning Appliance Co. Ltd, Metro and taobao.com were among the ten named industry leaders. Surprisingly, in the company of Wal-Mart, Gome and many other retail giants, taobao.com was selected as most influential enterprise in China's retail industry in 2006 with 59% support of industry insiders.

A more astonishing indication of taobao.com's yearly performance was released officially after the summit. The latest statistics shows that the trading volume of taobao.com reached RMB 16.9 billion (2.2 billion USD) last year which surpassed the sales of Wal-Mart and Metro in China.

Taobao.com, which was established three years ago, has become more influential than Wal-Mart, the global retail superpower in China. "When Wal-Mart entered China, everyone was concerned that China's retail industry would be overwhelmed by Wal-Mart. But now taobao.com has defeated War-Mart which demonstrates that foreign 'superpowers' are nothing to fear." said LongYongtu, the chairman of the summit.

Sun Tongyu, the president of taobao.com, indicated that in the next three years taobao.com will begin its second start-up. Taobao.com has focused on the retail sector so it will regard Wal-Mart, Gome and other retail giants as competitors. "Taobao will combine traditional retail experience with e-commerce, creating a new retail concept in China, upgrading the level of China's e-commerce and retail industries", said Sun Tongyu.

Sun Tongyu estimates that the total transaction volume on taobao.com will exceed RMB 40 billion (5.2 billion USD) in 2007. Taobao.com will become a website with a RMB 100 billion (12.9 billion USD) trading volume creating one million job opportunities by 2009.

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