The dazzling economic ascent of China within just a few decades and the geopolitical concerns raised by its relations with Taiwan or the USA regularly make headlines in the media. However, that visible tip of the iceberg masks some other advances in the economic field that might eventually shift the centre of the world Beijing-wards. This is particularly the case in the e-commerce sector, where the Chinese have built a very specific economic model that is significantly different from the commercial strategies of Western countries but currently enables them to control the whole of the value chain for the products they sell. Might China, long confined to being the world’s workshop, be moving now toward controlling all the cogs of global e-commerce from manufacture to distribution, and supplanting the American giants in that sector (such as Amazon) in Asia, Europe and even the USA?
In this article, Henri Isaac shows how China has gradually gained a foothold in the electronic commerce sector, developing platforms it patiently tried and tested on its own territory before setting out to conquer other markets abroad. He describes the various actors who occupy this commercial field and the largely AI-backed business models and strategies they have developed, together with the reactions of the American and European players to the offensive they have mounted. A reaction which may come too late to turn the situation around…
This article is downloadable only in French. It is not available in English.
