China’s online spending to hit $2 trillion this year

Just two years after China’s online shoppers hit the US$1 trillion milestone, they’re on course to spend US$2 trillion in 2019, according to new data from Emarketer.

That’s the equivalent of every one of China’s 802 million web users spending US$2,494 at online stores.

By the end of the year, over a third of China’s retail sales will occur online – and that’s “by far the highest rate in the world,” the analysts say. Here’s the picture for China:

Meanwhile, over in the US:

China is this year set to surpass the US as the world’s top retail market, hitting US$5.6 trillion in total consumer expenditure, versus the States’ US$5.5 trillion.

Alibaba slides

Alibaba will account for a record US$1 trillion of China’s online shopping spree this year, says Emarketer. But the number disguises how the nation’s ecommerce titan is losing grip, with its market share plummeting from 69.7 percent to 53.3 percent in the past three years.

Second-place JD is holding steady with 16 percent share.

The big gainer is Pinduoduo, a new app that has used aggressive price-cutting and a focus on cash-strapped shoppers to go from zero to seven percent of the market – that’s US$139 billion in sales – in just three years.

The largely forgotten Amazon, down in seventh position, will sink further to 0.6 percent share, down from one percent in 2016.