Online buyers on the march

By the end of 2012, China had 242 million online shoppers, up by 24.8 percent in a year. They spent nearly 1.26 trillion yuan ($207 billion) last year, up by 66.5 percent from 2011, the China Internet Network Information Center said in a report in April.

China's e-commerce market is projected to surpass that of the United States this year and reach 3.3 trillion yuan by 2015, management consultancy Bain & Co says.

Sales from Alibaba's two platforms last year reached 1 trillion yuan, while the country's total retail sales of consumer goods reached 20 trillion yuan.