District's business park aims to lure more e-commerce companies

Beijing plans to compete with Hangzhou to become a leading city in e-business as it builds its Tongzhou district into what it hopes will be one of the largest bases for the sector in the country.

"In the next three to five years, we are about to introduce 10 to 20 e-commerce companies, which have national influence, into our district," said Zhang Hua, deputy chief of Tongzhou district.

The move may help Tongzhou become the most powerful e-business center in northern China and lift Beijing into the top spot among Chinese cities in terms of e-commerce competitiveness, Zhang said.

Liu Zhi, deputy secretary-general of Beijing municipal government, said Tongzhou is an important part of Beijing's bid to build itself into a world city.

"Beijing will support Tongzhou with manpower, materials and money, to help it develop the e-business industry," Liu said.

According to the plan, the park will include buildings able to accommodate 30 corporate headquarters, each with space of between 1,000 and 4,000 sq m. Construction will begin before the end of June.

However, despite the fact that Beijing is throwing a lot of resources and government support at the e-business area, Beijing will still need to make up a lot of ground if it is to catch up with its competitors.

"When it comes to e-business development, we admit Beijing is lagging compared to some southern cities, such as Hangzhou and Shanghai," said a manager of the merchants department at Beijing Tongzhou Business Park Development and Construction Co., who declined to be named.

Hangzhou, for example, is the home city that spawned many e-commerce giants including Taobao.com, Alibaba.com and Alipay.com.

The city was awarded the title "China E-business City" in 2008 and boasts more than 20 percent of the nation's e-business companies.

Last year, personal e-business retail sales in Hangzhou accounted for between 5 and 6 percent of its total social retail sales, three times the national figure.

"But Beijing has its own reasons to quicken the pace to build an e-business base," the manager said.

"Firstly, Beijing has a strong headquarters economy which provides rich resources for e-business development. Among Fortune 500 enterprises, 26 companies have set up their regional headquarters in Beijing, making it the third favorite city for a headquarters worldwide."

The second reason is that more and more e-business start-ups are created and operated in Beijing. Chen said the capital should create a base for those startups and help nurture them.

"The base can provide them with preferential policies and a better investment environment," he said. "What's more, compared with other districts, Tongzhou has the most convenient transport in terms of connecting with places outside Beijing, because, for e-business companies, good transport is a key factor."

An official with the Tongzhou commission of commerce said preferential policies for e-business companies in Tongzhou will likely be launched by the end of the year.

"Related municipal government authorities are discussing it (the policy) now," she said.

Lining, Suning and Gome, companies that operate in both the traditional business and e-business models, have already set up headquarters in Tongzhou, Zhao said.

On April 23, Baidu Inc and Japan's biggest B2C (business-to-consumer) website - Rakuten - together established an enterprise in Tongzhou aimed at creating the largest B2C shopping website in the Chinese mainland.

360buy.com, China's top B2C website, is also expected to build Asia's largest e-commerce distribution center in Tongzhou.

Liu Qiangdong, CEO of the company, said the new distribution center will cost 600 million to 800 million yuan and occupy 300,000 sq m. A single warehouse might be as big as 150,000 sq m, 20,000 sq m larger than Amazon's warehouse in Tokyo.

"Firstly, we want to choose a place where transport is good," Liu said. "Secondly, since we will acquire a huge amount of land, of course, the cheaper the better."

Tongzhou officials confirmed Liu was in talks with them.

According to statistics provided by the Tongzhou commission of commerce, e-business trade volume in Beijing reached 230 billion yuan and the number of netizens in the capital reached more than one million last year.

China Daily