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Comment by ghshephard | Hacker News Reader

Particularly fascinating, that as a long time daily (hourly?) reader of HN I've never even heard of Taobao before today.

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China's web, while accessible via the "regular" internet (vs things like Iran's and NK's version of the internet) is really an internet all to its own.

The average citizen in China does not use any foreign websites to do anything [citation needed]. All the services you and I consume online are replicated in China by Chinese companies. From Gmail to Yahoo!, from Facebook to twitter, from Amazon to eBay, from CNN to FOX.

It's really no surprise you haven't heard of this (I haven't either). Very few such Chinese sites even attempt at marketing themselves out of mainland China (notable exemption being the original Alibaba marketplace to great effect, Taobao is apparently a different site by the same group). It's fascinating how the internet has so effectively bridged other cultures while keeping others at arm's length - even when connected and technically accessible.

The reason for this is because the way the chinese internet is structured it all flows through a single back bone in and out of the country so that it can be easily censored or even cut off if needed. This means latency is terrible, when doing a traceroute out of china you can see the first hop outside the country adds at minimum 200ms. Then you factor into the fact that many sites like youtube, twitter, and facebook are blocked. The rest provide little or no content for chinese readers it is not surprising that the average chinese user never visits any foreign websites.

For every site that is created in a western country in english there is a chinese equivalent that will pop up within a few months that caters to chinese users and the chinese language. Western companies just dont care enough about the chinese users to create sites that they would be comfortable using

Don't care or just trying to avoid the legal quagmire that is China?

Maybe the censorship issues caused by the governmental firewall coupled with murky rules for doing business over the web in China, doesn't exactly translate into a business friendly environment?

well, i'd say that the unfriendly business environment lies in the usa, and europe. i look around China and see different car brands from throughout the world. however, when i go to western countries, the choices are limited to europe, usa, japan, and south korea. the same goes for other products. for example, there are abou 20 different tablet brands in China, however, in western countries, only a couple of them really dominate. China allows just about every brand of tablets, and mobile phones you can think of. however, the west is extremely limiting when it comes to the choices of brands. there are probably 5 different shoe brands in China that are the equivalent of nike, and adidas. they are called lining, 361, anta, peak, and xtep. in addition to selling these brands, China also welcome brands from the west, and throughout the world to be sold in China. my conclusion is that the west is much more business unfriendly than China. sure China does have some protectionist measures, but overall, after i have compared the two places, i find that i have much more choices in China than in the west. by the way, skype, ebay, and amazon all operate in China, and have millions of customers. on the other hand, how many taobao, 360buy, and uu customers can you find in europe?

> flows through a single back bone in and out of the country

This is false, actually the GFW is built in parallel with multiple backbones, which in very high bandwidth the censorship fails from time to time.

It's a language issue. I spent some time in a major inland Chinese city this year. 2 weeks in a city of 14m people and I didn't run into a single one that spoke sufficient English for a conversation.

> China's web, while accessible via the "regular" internet (vs things like Iran's and NK's version of the internet) is really an internet all to its own.

Same goes for Russia.. and in smaller scale to some other countries.

this is not because China isn't trying to market itself outside, it is because if China expands overseas, then it will threaten the interests of amazon, ebay, facebook, twitter, yahoo, gmail,cnn, and fox. if people had a chance to try out the Chinese version, 50% of them would choose the Chinese version instead. facebook, twitter, amazon, ebay, cnn, fox, gmail, and yahoo would absolutely retaliate by launching some kind of trade war, including all kinds of dirty tricks, sabatoge, etc. this is what China is afraid of, and this is why China is afraid to expand. why do you think most of the world uses gmail, yahoo, facebook, ebay, and twitter. it's not that they are unable to develop their own, it's that they don't want to break the unwritten rule, that is, do not threaten the business interests of american corporations. this is why the u.s. spends so much on military. if they had no military to back up their corporations, then people would simply go in their own direction, and the market would be up for grabs, but for now, it will stay firmly in the grips of the u.s. corps

So, for every new Chinese startup, are there hordes of people crying about why they haven't rolled out to America?

(I'm sorry, this comment isn't like me, but I couldn't resist.)

People in China are well-informed about all these companies overseas and often question about the Chinese version's originality. Companies like Amazon do have their own branch in China and it's not really that isolated as you seemed to suggest.

You can't really complain that Chinese companies exploit a market left untouched by culturally-ignorant Western companies. I bet if more US companies spent more time targeting the Chinese market in the right way (i.e. perfect i18n support, interfaces built with Chinese languages in mind etc), these knockoffs would get less traction.

(Of course there's always the political problem, the knockoffs are often State-sponsored etc etc, but I bet they'd suffer in face of superior competition, if they actually had real competition.)

Look what happens when western companies try? Google, for example...

Why would people be crying that knockoffs of US sites have not rolled out to the US? Perhaps I missed your sarcasm...?

Taobao is fantastic for buying anything China makes (which is almost everything). It is part auction house, part business-to-business sales. There are even quite a few services to get around the language barrier.

A word of caution, if something goes wrong your money is almost certainly lost. Sometimes the firm that you bought it from has folded (I've had this happen in the time it took to deliver the order) to the seller sending bricks. It is buyer beware to the extreme but usually for the price you are paying you can afford to lose the occasional shipment and still save money.

Interesting to read your comment and dmoy's.

On the one hand, compared to Amazon.com, Taobao sounds like a horrible shopping experience. On the other hand, compared to a shuk (or whatever the Chinese equivalent is), it is a vast improvement.

Context is everything.

with all due respect to Tsagadai, I disagree. Taobao is an excellent shopping experience and I've never been ripped off there (perhaps my wife is an expert taobao-ista, which helps).

(1) Shops are absolutely crap scared of a bad review. Shoppers avoid bad reviews like the plague, and there's normally so much competition that you can always find an alternative. The 1 time we gave a bad review, we had a call from the seller within 1 hour offering all manner of things for us to take it back.

(2) Delivery is excellent - next day courier services. Taobao practically revolutionised the postal service in China because the national postal system was so bad. So, 10RMB (around £1) can get you national, next-day delivery for most small items (eg. a small parcel).

(3) The mobile site is awesome, full stop.

(4) There's just so much choice. I can buy official, full price products from the brand (ie, not a reseller, but the actual company), or 2nd hand, or knockoffs. Most knockoffs are clearly marked as such.

(5) Safety - it's not a direct payment system per se, but an escrow service. If you aren't happy in any way with your product, you click a button and the seller gets nothing.

Most of the time the experience is fantastic but like any shop you can get ripped off. I've been ripped off a few times on ebay and craigslist too. Certain product categories tend to attract scammers and I know many people who have never had a bad experience (other than getting things months late but that is usually caused by customs or courier services at either end). As always, until the product is working and in your hands you should be wary of the seller and take precautions to avoid becoming a mark.

Taobao has one factor that generally makes it better than ebay and most other online retailers and auction sites: it is the sole source of income for many companies that sell through it. Many Chinese manufacturers are only selling their products through the alibaba ecosystem so they really care about their reputation. That is why they get defensive or start offering all sorts of things to remove bad reviews, because it can shut down their whole revenue stream.

ive used both ebay, and taobao, and i have been ripped off once from taobao, compared to about 5 times on ebay. i am not including ebay the corporation themselves ripping me off. they froze my account, and took all my money. i've also talked to someone else who had her account frozen with about $10,000 in her account. ebay is now using the excuse of "security" to freeze your account. they say they want to protect your "online safety", but the truth is, they just want to take your money. many ebay employeees have come forward and exposed the dodgy practices of ebay. China will always come up with the better stuff because people are constantly criticising China, so they strive to be better. on the other hand, anyone criticising ebay, or amazon will be met immediately by 100 shills who say that ebay, and amazon are great. thats why ebay and amazon will never improve because instead of spending time to make themselves better, they are spending money hiring shills.

There are a lot of stories about Shop-owners begging customers to change their bad review, and some shop-owners goes further trying to bribe Employees inside Taobao company (to cheat on the review system), last year Jack Ma (the boss) fired quite a few people because of this.

Makes me wish I could read/write/speak the language.

You don't need to because they want to sell to you and there are also third parties helping this happen.

There is aliexpress also which is in many languages.

My friends and I do online shopping a lot, so far as I know, Taobao is better than all other competitors in China, such as Amazon China / DangDang / JinDong...

Taobao is awesome. The barrier is a bit higher without being able to read Chinese, but with someone to help you navigate the final portions, it's a damn good deal. Way more relaxing than going to the markets and getting mobbed.

Will they ship anywhere? i.e. will they send an individual item to North America? or even a whole container?

Yes they will (most of times). One thing to remember: Taobao is entirely third party sellers. Nothing you buy come from Taobao itself. So from item to item, the terms vary quite a bit.

mostly, but I don't think all?? The TMall section is large retail stores - it's the equivalent of buying from a large high-street retailer. Some of them are shipping thousands of packages a day, so you can place some faith in them (ie. at least 110+ stores made more than 10million RMB in a day, so it's not like buying from a street market trader.)

There are companies setup that will buy things for you on taobao and ship them to you overseas. They help with customs etc and have sites in English. Google 'taobao english' and/or 'taobao agent'

I wonder if there's an opportunity for a service "to help you navigate the final portions"?

After reading this I messaged a friend of mine who has been living in Hong Kong for the past 3 years and he said, "every single female I know uses Taobao religiously, it's awesome; I'm surprised you guys haven't heard of it!".

That said, even after his explanation of "it's kind of like amazon prime" I still don't understand what's going on here.

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