Alibaba's financial arm made an investment in Thailand's payment service provider Ascend Money in November 2016, about seven months after Alibaba became the biggest shareholder in Lazada, Southeast Asia's largest cross-border e-commerce platform.
Another e-commerce company, JD.com Inc, China's second largest online retailer by sales, has also rolled out a globalization strategy in line with the B&R. Jd.com started by forging a tie-up with the Russia e-commerce company Ulmart in 2015.
Exploring new opportunities
AliExpress hopes the B&R initiative will help it increase its customer base by an order of magnitude.
The initiative will give AliExpress the momentum it needs to grow its number of global buyers to 1 billion, or 10 times its current customer base, in seven years, AliExpress general manager Shen Difan said on April 10 at a press conference in Alibaba's home city of Hangzhou, capital of East China's Zhejiang Province.
The conference was attended by vendors from seven countries and regions, including Spain, Russia, Brazil and the UK.
During the conference, Alfonso Noriega Gomez, economic and commercial counselor of the Consulate General of Spain in Shanghai, pointed out that Spain and China will have closer ties via the B&R initiative, and Spain wants to work with major e-commerce companies such as Alibaba so the initiative can reach its full potential.
AliExpress has become the third largest online shopping platform in Spain, Gomez said.
E-commerce could have a promising future in B&R countries in Southeast Asia, Central Asia and Russia, where the quality of traditional business infrastructure is low and local demand for low-cost goods is high, experts said.
By comparison, it is difficult for Chinese e-commerce companies to breach the US market, where the retail industry is mature, Lu Zhenwang, founder of Shanghai Wanqing Commerce Consulting, told the Global Times on Wednesday. A report from the Beijing-based market research firm iResearch estimated that China's cross-border e-commerce market will exceed 7 trillion yuan ($1.01 trillion) in 2017 and grow up to 12 trillion yuan by 2020 under the B&R initiative.
Challenges ahead
The overseas expansion of Chinese e-commerce platforms can benefit medium and small-sized businesses like Zhong Ding Tai Feng by improving their access to global markets, said Liu Dingding, an independent IT expert. Still, there are still challenges in many countries that need to be overcome for Chinese e-commerce to flourish overseas.
Vijay Sharma, the founder of India's mobile payment tool Paytm, said in a press conference held in Shanghai in June 2016 that India's financial services are relatively undeveloped. For example, less that 20 percent of the population has a bank account.
In addition to payment services, delivery is also seen as a challenge.
Some residents in Russia have to wait about 15 days to receive their online purchase from China, Li said. In China, customers typically have to wait about three days.
Still, there has been a great deal of improvement over the last few years. When AliExpress first entered Russia in 2012, it typically took 60 days for Russian customers to receive their goods, Hu Yanhui, AliExpress's operating director, stated in the press release.
Russia's e-commerce ecosystem is still evolving, making it possible for any company to lead the market, so long as it can find the right local partners, Liu told the Global Times.
Alibaba's rival Amazon.com reportedly plans to enter Southeast Asia via Singapore in 2017.
In Li's mind, his company has many options besides AliExpress for reaching customers abroad.
"We will choose the more established Amazon and eBay as partners to expand our presence in the EU market," Li said.
