After engineering the Alibaba miracle, legendary Chinese entrepreneur Jack Ma Yun is moving on. In his ambition to develop Alibaba into an all-mighty Internet empire, Taobao, Alibaba’s online shopping subsidiary, aspires to exceed world giant Wal-Mart in ten years.

At the fifth anniversary ceremony of Taobao.com, Chairman Ma said the Alibaba Group would invest another 2 billion yuan in Taobao to help it overtake eBay and Amazon in 5 years time, and Wal-Mart in 10, to become the world’s largest retailer.

In the past 5 years, Alibaba has innovated with all kinds of sales and promotion measures that were fresh to industry insiders. Taobao, with the investment of only 1.45 billion yuan, has overwhelmed eBay’s China operation, with over $300 million investment, and has become China’s biggest online shopping platform enjoying over 70% market share.

Taobao has also kept the market guessing, its IPO still a mystery. “There’s no timetable for Taobao’s IPO in the short-term,” Ma says.

After Alibaba Group’s listing in Hong Kong, it is not hurting for capital, with a cash flow reaching $2.3 billion. Alibaba’s 2 billion yuan Taobao investment will be used mainly in technical innovation, talent recruitment and infrastructure. Alibaba plans to build Taobao and the whole of Alibaba into a huge and well developed e-commerce chain.

Ma Yun has had his doubters, and during its hardest time some investors even suggested Alibaba move to the online game business. But Ma has always had faith in e-commerce. “Making money is the only game in the world that people will never be tired of.” Market research shows that Taobao now holds the lion’s share of China’s online retail market. At the beginning of the year Taobao set 100 billion yuan as its annual turnover goal. Achieving this would put the company at or near the top of China’s retailing industry.

Ma says the 2 billion yuan additional investment will be spread over 5 years.

“In the last century, the IT industry served the manufacturing industry, and cultivated as clients business giants such as Wal-Mart, while in this century IT itself will provide customers with personalized service, and customization,” he says.

China’s online shopping can only continue to surge in the near future. “In the next few years, China’s Internet users will reach 500-600 million, and by then about 100-200 million people will be shopping on Taobao every day. Show me a company with such scale?” asked Ma Yun. Ma Yun believes Taobao’s rapid development will quickly narrow the gap between Taobao and Wal-Mart. Taobao took only four years to reach 40 billion yuan from zero, while it took Wal-Mart 29 years to accomplish the same goal. Moreover, in the coming years, Taobao is expected to grow by 100% every year, while Wal-Mart’s annual growth rate looks to be no more than 10%.