Already home to the world’s largest population of Internet users, China now has 145 million online shoppers – second only to the U.S., with 170 million e-shoppers. (See Exhibit 1.) Online spending in China is expected to surge over the next five years as personal incomes and comfort with online shopping increase. As a result, the size of the country’s e-commerce market could reach RMB 2 trillion ($315 billion) by 2015, surpassing even that of the U.S. And nearly half of China’s urban consumers, accounting for about 80 percent of the country’s GDP, will be shopping both on- and offline within the next five years.
