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Lessons from Alibaba.com: government’s role in electronic contracting
Qin Hu Xun Wu and Clement K. Wang
The authors
Qin Hu is a Lawyer, Legal Counsel of China Merchants Sekou Industrial Zone Company Limited, Shenzhen, China. Xun Wu is based at the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA. Clement K. Wang is Associate Director (Research), NUS Enterprise Centre, National University of Singapore, Singapore.

Introduction
Story of Alibaba.com The development of e-commerce has been nothing short of explosive in recent years. Many believe that its growth and impact will only become more prevailing in the future. The sale of goods by US firms over the Internet, for example, is predicted to reach $1.3 trillion by 2003. By 2004, European enterprises are expected to have online sales of $1.6 trillion[1]. Companies in China, with the largest population in the world, are also probing this new source of revenue. The China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC) issued an Annual Report in Internet Development in January 2000 that estimates that there were 22.5 million Internet users in China at the end of 2000[2]. A recent nationwide survey showed that China had more than 1,100 consumer related e-commerce Web sites by the end of the first quarter in 2000 (People’s Daily, 2000). Four Web companies, Sina.com, Sohu.com, China.com, and Netease.com have already been listed on the NASDAQ. However, the country’s e-commerce market is still in its infancy. We will begin with the story of Alibaba.com Among all the developing e-commerce businesses in China, Alibaba.com has received much attention, despite not yet being listed on the NASDAQ. Alibaba.com’s two biggest investors are US investment bank Goldman Sachs and Japanese Internet investor Softbank, Softbank’s chairman Masayoshi Son is on the Alibaba board along with Peter Sutherland, former

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