阿里巴巴有志集亞馬遜,eBay和貝寶於一體

Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. -- which is preparing to launch perhaps the largest U.S. stock listing ever of a Chinese company -- dominates China's e-commerce market. But not everybody in the U.S. has a grasp of its scope.

阿里巴巴集團(Alibaba Group Holding Ltd.)準備赴美國上市，有望成爲有史以來美國市場上規模最大的一樁中資公司首次公開募股(IPO)。阿里巴巴主導着中國的電子商務市場，但並非所有美國人都清楚阿里巴巴的業務範圍。

Perhaps the best way to understand Alibaba is as a mix of Amazon, eBay and PayPal, with a dash of Google thrown in, all with some uniquely Chinese characteristics.

瞭解阿里巴巴的最佳方法也許是把它看成亞馬遜(Amazon)、eBay和貝寶(PayPal)的混合體，再加入一點谷歌(Google)成份。每塊業務都具有獨特的中國特色。

Unlike Inc., which buys goods from suppliers and sells them to customers, Alibaba has always acted as a middleman, connecting buyers and sellers and facilitating transactions between them. While it isn't an auction company, its middleman role is similar to the one played by eBay Inc.

不同於亞馬遜從供應商進貨再銷售給客戶的經營模式，阿里巴巴扮演的是中間人的角色，它把買家和賣家聯繫到一起，爲他們之間的交易提供便利。阿里巴巴並非拍賣公司，但其中間人角色與eBay Inc.扮演的角色相似。

Taobao, Alibaba's biggest website, is like a gigantic Chinese bazaar, with about 760 million product listings from seven million sellers. Merchants don't pay to sell products on Taobao. Instead, they pay Alibaba for advertising and other services to allow them to stand out from the crowd.

阿里巴巴旗下的最大網站淘寶(Taobao)像一個龐大的中國集市，約有7.6億條商品信息，註冊賣家多達700萬家。賣家在淘寶上銷售產品無需支付手續費。不過，如果想讓自己的商品在淘寶上脫潁而出，賣家就要向阿里巴巴支付廣告費以及其他服務費用。

That no-fee model is part of Taobao's appeal in China. Much as with Google Inc., the ads from merchants appear with Taobao's product-search results.

在中國，這種免費模式構成了淘寶的吸引力之一。買家在淘寶上搜索商品時，賣家的廣告會出現在搜索結果頁面上，這與谷歌的廣告模式相似。

While Taobao is mostly for small merchants, Tmall, another shopping site run by Alibaba, is designed for bigger merchants, including well-known brands such as Nike Inc. and Gap Inc. Apple Inc. this year opened a store on Tmall. Unlike Taobao, Tmall, which has about 70,000 merchants, charges each seller a deposit and an annual fee, as well as a commission on each transaction.

淘寶上的賣家大多是小商戶。阿里巴巴旗下另一個購物網站天貓(Tmall)是專門爲大商戶設計的，已進駐天貓的知名品牌包括耐克(Nike Inc.)、Gap Inc.等。蘋果公司(Apple Inc.)今年也在天貓開設了一家官方旗艦店。天貓目前擁有約7萬家商戶。與淘寶不同，天貓向所有商戶收取保證金和年費，並向每單交易收取佣金。

What sets Alibaba apart is size. The company has said that Taobao and Tmall account for more than half of all parcel deliveries in China. In 2012, the combined transaction volume of Taobao and Tmall topped one trillion yuan ($163 billion), more than Amazon and eBay combined.

龐大的業務規模令阿里巴巴顯得與衆不同。該公司稱，淘寶和天貓產生的快遞包裹已佔到中國整個快遞業務量的一半以上。2012年，淘寶和天貓平臺綜合在一起的交易額突破人民幣1萬億元（約合1,630億美元），超過了亞馬遜和eBay的交易總額。

Alibaba's revenue is about one-tenth of Amazon's because the Chinese company doesn't sell products on its site. But Alibaba is far more profitable. Alibaba's third-quarter revenue rose 51% from a year earlier to $1.78 billion. Net profit was $792 million, giving the company a profit margin of 44.6%, according to shareholder Yahoo Inc., which owns a 24% stake in Alibaba. Amazon posted revenue of $17.09 billion and a loss of $41 million in the same quarter.

由於阿里巴巴本身並不在其網站上銷售產品，該集團的收入僅相當於亞馬遜的十分之一左右，但利潤率卻高得多。據阿里巴巴股東雅虎(Yahoo Inc.)披露的數據，去年第三季度，阿里巴巴收入爲17.8億美元，同比增長51%； 利潤爲7.92億美元，利潤率達到44.6%。雅虎持有阿里巴巴24%的股權。相比之下，亞馬遜當季收入爲170.9億美元，但同期虧損4,100萬美元。

Alibaba, which could raise about $15 billion from its U.S. IPO, also has emerged as a huge player in China's creaky financial system. To solve the problem of buyers trusting merchants on its site, Alibaba created Alipay, a payment system that protects buyers if sellers don't deliver. Alipay has become so ingrained in China that when the company created a money-market fund, it became one of the world's largest in just eight months.

阿里巴巴赴美上市可能籌資約150億美元，該公司同時還成爲中國脆弱的金融系統中的一個重要力量。爲了解決其網站買家與商戶之間的信任問題，阿里巴巴打造了支付系統支付寶(Alipay)，以便在賣家不發貨的情況下保護買家的利益。支付寶在中國已經根深蒂固，以至於阿里巴巴設立一個貨幣市場基金時，該基金在短短八個月內就成爲世界最大的同類基金之一。

Alibaba also makes microloans and is taking part in a Chinese government program to set up five private banks on a trial basis in some big cities. Run by an affiliate of Alibaba, the payment system has allowed the company to accumulate a vast amount of information on Chinese small businesses, consumers and their online transactions.

阿里巴巴還發放小額貸款，並參與了中國政府在一些大城市設立五家民營銀行的試點計劃。由阿里巴巴旗下公司運營的支付系統讓該公司積累了大量有關中國中小企業、消費者以及他們在線交易的信息。

Even though Alibaba remains by far the biggest player in China's fast-growing e-commerce market, the company faces stiff competition as more Chinese consumers use smartphones. Social-media and online-games company Tencent Holdings Ltd. is emerging as a powerful competitor because of its ability to use its popular WeChat mobile-messaging application as a platform to offer services such as e-commerce.

雖然阿里巴巴仍然是中國快速增長的電子商務市場的龍頭老大，但隨着更多的中國消費者使用智能手機，阿里巴巴開始面臨激烈的競爭。社交媒體和在線遊戲公司騰訊控股(Tencent Holdings Ltd.)就是阿里巴巴的一大競爭對手。騰訊將該公司備受歡迎的移動短消息應用微信(WeChat)作爲一個平臺，向用戶提供電子商務等服務。

To further bolster its e-commerce capabilities, Tencent this month announced a deal to buy a 15% stake in Inc., China's second-largest e-commerce firm.

爲進一步增強電子商務方面的能力，騰訊本月宣佈了收購中國第二大電子商務公司京東商城( Inc.) 15%股權的交易。

Alibaba has fought back with a string of deals, including its offer last month to pay $1.13 billion for the 72% stake in Chinese online map company AutoNavi Holdings Ltd. that it didn't already own. Last year Alibaba invested $585.8 million for a 18% stake in Sina Weibo, the popular microblogging site controlled by Sina Corp.

阿里巴巴也不甘示弱，該公司也進行了一系列收購，包括上個月提出以11.3億美元收購其尚未持有的中國在線地圖公司高德(AutoNavi Holdings Ltd.)剩餘72%股權的的交易。去年阿里巴巴斥資5.858億美元收購了新浪微博(Sina Weibo)的18%股權，新浪微博是新浪(Sina Corp.)旗下的高人氣微博客網站。

Weibo unveiled plans Friday to sell $500 million of stock in the U.S.

新浪微博上週五公佈了在美國上市的計劃，擬發行5億美元股票。

Alibaba was founded in 1999 by Jack Ma, an English teacher in the eastern Chinese city of Hangzhou. Though the dot-com bubble was expanding in the U.S., the Internet was still a foreign concept to many Chinese businesses.

阿里巴巴是馬雲在1999年創立的，他原本是華東城市杭州的一名英語老師。當時雖然美國的互聯網泡沫正在擴大，但對許多中國企業來說，互聯網仍然是個陌生的概念。

Mr. Ma and 17 other founding members created , a trading website that connected Chinese manufacturers with overseas clients. Shortly after, eBay entered China by buying a stake in a domestic e-commerce company. Alibaba created Taobao in 2003 to enter a consumer e-commerce business, as China's Internet-user population was growing rapidly.

馬雲和另外17位創始團隊的成員創建了阿里巴巴網絡有限公司()，該交易網站將中國的製造商與海外客戶聯繫了起來。不久之後，eBay通過收購一家中國本土電子商務公司的股權進入中國市場。阿里巴巴於2003年創建淘寶網(Taobao)，進入消費者電商業務，當時正值中國互聯網用戶人數迅速增長之際。