Question
AuctionByte Newsflashes has a blurb this morning about fee reductions on the eBay China site.
It links to the following story on the ChinaTechNews.com site. It seems there will be no listing fees, reduced FVFs and reduced Store monthly fixed fees.
And we got a nickel off on 99 cents and under listings.
Interesting what competition does to the marketplace.
"eBay Eachnet Plans Transaction Fee Reductions
April 25, 2005
With rising competition in the Chinese online auction sector, eBay Eachnet has announced that it will make a large adjustment to its charging policy, starting May 1.
The transaction procedure fee for all goods will be reduced by 20-60%. At the same time, the online product display fee will be cancelled and the monthly store rent decreased from RMB50 to RMB35.
eBay Eachnet says it is lowering the transaction fees to promote market circulation and to attract more goods suppliers to its website.
However these price reductions will likely place more pressure on its two major competitors, Taobao.com and 1pai.com, who are running free services"
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I find it amazing that eBay thinks China is going to be the next big market for them. They seem to focus on the billion people there, but forget most make very little money. TheChinese simply have very few Renminbi/Yuan to spend.
Having visited the country and traded in the Chinese marketplace since 1998, I can testify that they are exceedingly clever and frugal sellers and buyers. Unlike we Americans, they will do without rather than pay a penny more than they think is right.
eBay will lose its shirt in China.
Larry
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Originally Posted by litlux
I find it amazing that eBay thinks China is going to be the next big market for them. They seem to focus on the billion people there, but forget most make very little money. TheChinese simply have very few Renminbi/Yuan to spend.
Having visited the country and traded in the Chinese marketplace since 1998, I can testify that they are exceedingly clever and frugal sellers and buyers. Unlike we Americans, they will do without rather than pay a penny more than they think is right.
eBay will lose its shirt in China.
Larry
Litlux,
I agree completely with your assessment. What is eBay thinking? Have you visited www.taobao.com? I sure wish I could read chinese...
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Taobao has a companion site, also owned by Jack Ma's company, www.Alibaba.com which is in English and seems to offer opportunities for direct purchases from China.
Freight costs and the reliability of the sellers are both reasonable concerns but it would seem to offer some interesting options for the future.
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Reston-Ray,
Thanks for posting that. I've just spent a few minutes looking over it.
It appears that the minimum orders are fairly large, probably container size lots. I imagine that trading in container size lots on ebay would be pretty appealing to the stock holders.
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i wonder how long it will be before they announce a 20-60% increase in our fees to make up for lost profits there?
/cynical mode
larry, do you know what percentage of people in china are even ON the internet? Never been there, only know what I see on tv (mostly pbs) but I thought all but a few big cities were extremely rural, so rural as to not have running water even, let alone the internet. There was a show on pbs relatively recently on china though I don't remember the specific focus of the show.
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Unlike we Americans, they will do without rather than pay a penny more than they think is right.
I agree 100% with the above knowing what I do about the Chinese ways. Only we Americans bend over sooooooooo easily...
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Actually the internet is quite far advanced in China, though mostly through Internet Cafes. About 100 million Chinese use a computer, most away from home.
It is one of the few sources of non-government information. Of course, the Chinese government has 30,000 censors working on blocking information it considers objectionahle.
Here is a recent Washington Post update (I have a subscription):
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washingtonpost.com
Web Censors In China Find Success
Falun Gong, Dalai Lama Among Blocked Topics
By Jonathan Krim
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, April 14, 2005; Page A20
The Chinese government is succeeding in broadly censoring what its citizens can read on the Internet, surprising many experts and denting U.S. government hopes that online access would be a quick catalyst for democratic political reform.
Internet users in the world's most populous country are routinely blocked from sites featuring information on subjects such as Taiwanese independence, the Falun Gong movement, the Dalai Lama and the Tiananmen Square uprising in 1989, according to a study to be released today by a consortium of researchers from Harvard University, the University of Toronto and Cambridge University in England.
The study, which evaluated China's Internet practices over the past year, found the government employed an aggressive array of tactics, including blocking certain keyword searches and whole Web sites, and forcing cyber-cafes to keep records of users and the Web pages they visit.
"China operates the most extensive, technologically sophisticated and broad-reaching system of Internet filtering in the world," the study said.
Researchers said they worry that China's censorship system could become a model for other countries looking to keep the lid on Internet use.
China's success at censorship is even more remarkable to researchers because the country is promoting economic growth using technology. An estimated 100 million Chinese use the Internet, nearly half of whom who have high-speed connections.
"The Chinese are successfully developing a market economy at the same time they are continuing to accomplish control over the Internet and the media," said C. Richard D'Amato, chairman of the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, which monitors and promotes economic progress in China.
D'Amato said the jury "is not only out, it's way out" on whether the Internet is playing the democratizing role the United States had hoped.
The study also undermines the popular notion that the Internet is an organism that is difficult to tame.
"The Internet is wildly misunderstood," said Rafal Rohozinski, director of the Advanced Network Research Group at Cambridge, who participated in the study. "It is built around very specific chokepoints" that can be controlled.
Using tests conducted inside and outside China, researchers were able to identify censorship at many of those points.
Filters are placed on the main "backbone" networks that carry Internet traffic, the study said. A handful of licensed Internet providers also perform their own filtering. Major Chinese search engines filter out or block keywords that would enable surfers to see certain sites. Providers of Web log, or blogging, services block certain posts. Text messaging software has built-in forbidden lists of keywords, which halt service temporarily if used.
Chinese authorities perform these tasks largely using U.S. hardware and software.
For example, Cisco Systems Inc. routers, machines that move Internet traffic around, are capable of recognizing individual portions of data, a technology that helps battle worms and viruses. That same technology can be used to distinguish certain content.
Companies such as Cisco and Google Inc. have been accused of aiding China's censorship by tailoring their products to suit the government's needs. The study did not confirm those allegations, which the companies have denied.
Some reports on Chinese censorship also claim that the country has as many as 30,000 "Internet police" dedicated to the task, but the study did not confirm that estimate. Still, it identified 11 government agencies that share responsibility for controlling Internet use in the country.
Despite wholesale blocking of Web sites dedicated to news on Taiwan or Tibet, for example, Chinese surfers still can get access to many Western news and culture sites.
Researchers said the filtering efforts seem to shift regularly, so that at certain times a CNN site on Tiananmen Square was accessible, for example.
Rohozinski said the censorship efforts seem to primarily target sites written in Chinese.
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What all this means to eBay is a fascinating question. If we think eBay is too strict with its blockage of Nazi and other materials that are found objectionable to some governments, can you imagine how much the Chinese want eBay to prohibit?
OTOH, I will bet big bucks that the number of in-China scams will be quite limited. With so many police and the intensive internet monitoring that is going on there it is too risky. I have seen the Chinese police in action, and it isn't pretty.
Larry
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a series on China on History International I watch each week, and its becoming easier and easier to get TV & internet access almost anywhere in China... they had an episode about it a month or two ago.
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Originally Posted by mel-
larry, do you know what percentage of people in china are even ON the internet? Never been there, only know what I see on tv (mostly pbs) but I thought all but a few big cities were extremely rural, so rural as to not have running water even, let alone the internet. There was a show on pbs relatively recently on china though I don't remember the specific focus of the show.
China is the second largest Internet user base after the U.S. It was the 3rd last year...but in Feb 2005, it bypassed Japan to become the 2nd.