Alibaba eyes a slice of smart city pie

Alibaba Group Holding Ltd on Wednesday made its biggest step to facilitate the government-backed smart city projects in which Tencent Holdings Ltd, its strongest rival, is also eyeing a piece.

The e-commerce giant's finance arm said it will partner with the country's largest microblogging platform Sina Weibo and Taobao.com, a retail site of Alibaba, to help local governments' efforts to improve administrative efficiency and transparency.

"We are looking to leverage on Internet and cloud computing to offer one-stop solutions for building smart cities," said Fan Zhiming, president of Alipay Zhejiang Ant Small and Micro Financial Services Group Co Ltd, which runs the mobile payment platform Alipay.