双语阅读｜中国电商的蓬勃发展
ON AN AVERAGE morning a young urban professional anywhere in the world might wake up, check her social-media feed and order a cab on her mobile. While sitting in traffic, she might use her phone to purchase groceries and watch a video, and later to pay the driver and buy a coffee. Once at work, she might make an online payment to reimburse a friend for a concert ticket. So far, so normal. But if that young urbanite were living in China, every one of these activities could have been powered either by Alibaba or a company in which it has a stake.
在世界各地，以下的场情如今似乎已然成为一种常态：城市的年轻白领每天早上醒来时查看社交媒体，用手机叫出租车。在堵车时，也许上网买东西，再看看视频，再用手机付车费或是买杯咖啡。到了单位后，可能会以在线支付的方式来偿还朋友代买的音乐会门票。不过，如果这是生活住在中国的白领的话，那么以上一切行为要不是直接通过阿里巴巴，要不就是间接地通过阿里巴巴入股的某个公司来完成。
E-commerce in China is sweeping the board. Last year online sales in China hit $366bn, almost as much as in America and Britain combined. Growth has slowed from its eye-popping pace of a few years ago, but Euromonitor predicts that online shopping’s share of total retail will rise to 24% by 2020; Goldman Sachs, whose forecast includes sales from one consumer to another, puts the figure at 31%. That will mean selling more to existing shoppers and gaining new ones in smaller cities and towns. About 80% of adults in China’s biggest cities already shop online.
中国的电子商务如日中天。去年的网络销售金额达到了3600亿美元，几近英美两国的总和。虽然从几年前开始，其亮眼的增长速度已趋缓，但是据欧睿国际预测，到2020年，网购在全部销售量中所占份额将会升至24%。高盛集团的预测，包含C2C的销售额在内，网购的份额应占到总销售量的31%。这也就意味着，现有的消费者会购买更多，同时要吸纳小城镇的消费者。在中国几大城市里，大约80%的成年人都是上网买东西。
Alibaba, the company leading this transition, makes most of its money from advertising. But it has permeated consumers’ lives in ways not yet seen in America or Europe. Westerners should picture a combination of Amazon, Twitter, eBay and PayPal, but broader. Alibaba’s creation story is well polished. Jack Ma, its founder and chairman, was born in Hangzhou in 1964, the same year as Amazon’s Mr Bezos, and perfected his English by offering free tours of his home town to foreigners. His first visit to America in 1995 inspired him to set up an internet business in China. After a few false starts he founded Alibaba in 1999 to help Chinese manufacturers sell to foreign buyers. He also established Taobao, where independent sellers can list products, and Tmall, an e-commerce site for big brands. Much more followed.
阿里巴巴领导了这一消费行为，并占据了网络销售广告收入的大部分份额。不过，它是对消费者生活的渗透程度却并未出现在在欧美市场。对西方人而言，这种渗透分别散落在亚马逊、推特、eBay和贝宝等网站上。阿里巴巴的创业传奇故事引人注目。阿里巴巴创始人及董事长马云于1964年生在浙江杭州，与亚马逊的贝佐斯同龄。他通过在给外国游客做免费的导游来提高自己的英文。1995年，他第一次赴美，产生了在中国做互联网生意的想法。在经历多次尝试失败后，他于1999年创建了阿里巴巴，帮助中国制造商将成品卖给外国买家。此外，他还创立了淘宝，供个体买家开设网店；建立了天猫平台，给一些大牌做线上旗舰店。之后还创建了多个电商平台。
Alibaba’s vertiginous rise was powered by hundreds of millions of increasingly well-off Chinese coming online, and helped along by a dearth of well-established incumbents. For example, its online marketplace required a reliable way to make payments in a country where credit cards were still rare. So Alibaba created Alipay, a digital payments system that held a buyer’s money until he received his order and was happy with it. It was spun out into an affiliate, Ant Financial, in 2014. Alipay is now used by about 520m people, not just to shop on Taobao or Tmall but to pay bills, buy lunch or send money to family. Amazon has nothing of this kind. Most American and European consumers have stuck with their tried-and-trusted credit cards. Last year Alipay had 2.5 times as many users as PayPal and more than 11 times as many as Apple Pay. And new services are still being added.
阿里巴巴的迅速崛起主要是因为亿万逐渐富裕的中国人进入了互联网时代，网络商务却缺乏一个经营良好的组织机构。比如，在一个信用卡并不盛行的国家里，它的网上商城需要一个可靠的支付渠道。因此，阿里巴巴创立了电子支付给系统支付宝，暂存买家的付款，在买家收到货物并对表示满意后，才会将钱转入卖家的手中。2014年，支付宝并入关联公司蚂蚁金服。现在，大约有5.2亿人在使用支付宝，不仅仅是在淘宝和天猫购物，更是用于支付账单、买午餐或者给家人转账。亚马逊就没有这样的功能。欧洲消费者则丢不掉历经时间考验的信用卡。2016年，支付宝用户数量是贝宝用户的2.5倍之多，银联云闪付的11倍多。支付宝的服务仍在不断增加。
Alibaba’s online marketplaces are also expanding. The company not only sells all manner of goods but has now moved into health care and services. Ali Health sells medicines online. Mr Zhang, Alibaba’s CEO, recently announced a partnership with Marriott, the world’s biggest hotel chain. His company has also bought or taken stakes in other firms to extend its reach. It owns Youku, a video-streaming site, and has invested in Weibo, a Twitter-like social-media company with 361m users, as well as Didi, a ride-sharing service. If a consumer likes the dress worn by an actress seen on Youku, she can instantly buy it through Tmall.
阿里巴巴的网上商城也在不断扩大。阿里巴巴现在不仅销售各种各样的商品，还进军了医疗服务产业。阿里健康在线上销售药品。阿里巴巴的CEO张勇最近宣布阿里与全球最大的连锁酒店万豪建立伙伴关系。阿里巴巴也收购或入股了一些公司，扩展业务范围。它收购了视频网站优酷，投资了类似推特、拥有3.61亿用户的社交公司微博，还投资了网络叫车平台滴滴。如果消费者通过优酷观看节目时心水演员所穿的衣服，可以立即通过天猫购买。
But if China reveals how broad one company’s scope can be, it also shows how a rival might emerge. Alibaba has two main competitors, JD and Tencent, which have recently joined forces. Tencent began as a gaming and messaging business. Its “Honour of Kings” is estimated to be the world’s top-grossing video game; its popular messaging app, WeChat, has 963m monthly users. Whereas Alibaba began with e-commerce and payments and then expanded, Tencent began with gaming and messaging and has moved further into commerce. Tencent’s mobile-payment app, WeChat Pay, had 40% of the market in the first quarter of the year, compared with Alipay’s 54%. Tencent started investing in JD three years ago; it now owns about one-fifth of it and is its biggest shareholder.
然而，中国不仅展现了一个企业的经营能如何广泛，还显示了强大的竞争对手的崛起。阿里巴巴现在有两个主要竞争对手——京东和腾讯，而且这两个公司已达成了合作。腾讯以游戏和在线聊天业务起家。"王者荣耀"预计是全球创收最多的游戏。它的微信每月活跃用户达9.63亿。虽然阿里巴巴是以电子商务和在线支付服务起家，随后不断扩张，以游戏和网络聊天的腾讯已拓展至电商行业。腾讯的移动支付软件微信支付，相比于支付宝54%的市场，在今年第一季度占有40%市场份额。腾讯三年前开始投资京东，拥有京东20%左右的股份，是京东最大的股东。
We know what you want before you want it
在你想要之前就知道了
Unlike Alibaba, JD sells its own inventory and that of third parties, and has its own distribution system. Shoppers can buy goods from JD within WeChat’s app. In August JD announced a partnership with Baidu, China’s biggest search engine. This blurring of boundaries between digital activities provides Alibaba, JD and Tencent with a vast amount of information about its customers’ lives. “We will know you as well as you know yourself,” says Zhang Chen, JD’s chief technology officer. Tencent can gather data from social-media feeds and payments both online and in stores, and Alibaba recently introduced a “unified ID”, which collects data on individuals across Alibaba’s many businesses. These data give companies greater insight into what consumers want so they can adjust their marketing accordingly. Big Brother, it turns out, is a capitalist who wants to sell you blue jeans.
京东与阿里巴巴不同，它不仅销售第三方的产品，还销售自己的产品，并且拥有自己的物流系统。消费者能够在微信上购买京东的商品。八月，京东宣布中国最大的搜索引擎百度达成合作。这种跨界的在线行为为阿里巴巴、京东及腾讯提供了大量有关消费者的生活的信息。京东首席技术官张晨说道：“我们将像你了解自己一样了解你。”腾讯收集社交动态以及线上线下支付收集数据，而阿里巴巴最近推出了“统一登录”功能，收集个人在阿里巴巴旗下业务里的数据。这些数据使得企业更好地提前了解消费者的需求，因此，它们能够相应地调整其市场营销策略。最后它变成了一个“监控一切”的资本家，向你兜售牛仔裤。
“The most important thing is not meeting the demand but creating the demand,” says Alibaba’s Mr Zhang. His company, JD and Tencent have ambitions beyond e-commerce. They are also after the 85% of the retail trade that still takes place offline, either by bringing more spending online or by serving customers in stores. WeChat Pay and Alipay are already widely used for physical transactions. Pass a clothing store and you may receive a personalised coupon on your phone. JD and Alibaba cast themselves as potential partners of bricks-and-mortar retailers, not just helping with delivery but providing tools to transform the way stores operate. JD is using its logistics business to supply goods to small convenience stores, cutting out parts of the supply chain. Alibaba has invested in grocery and department stores. In Hema Xiansheng, its growing supermarket chain, prices on electronic tags can be changed throughout the day.
阿里巴巴CEO张勇说：“最重要的不是满足需求，而是创造需求。”阿里巴巴、京东和腾讯都不满足于电子商务。它们还看中了85%的线下进行的零售业——这不仅将线下交易转移到线上，还为商铺的消费者提供服务。微信支付和支付宝如今已广泛用于实物交易。在路过一家服装店时，也许就会在手机上收到一张个性化的优惠券。京东和阿里巴巴将自己定义为实体零售商的潜在合作伙伴，不仅仅帮助发货，还为店铺改变运营模式提供支持。京东正利用其物流系统为小便利店提供货品，替代一部分供应链。阿里巴巴也投资了一些食品杂货店和百货商店。盒马鲜生是阿里不断扩展的连锁超市，电子价签时刻发生变动。
Mr Ma says he wants to use technology to change Chinese manufacturing. Alibaba already provides services such as advertising and cloud computing and hones those services continually, based on the data it gathers. Mr Zhang wants to use such “data-driven infrastructure” to support other businesses. In China, Alibaba has achieved some of that. But as it invests abroad, it is coming up against Amazon and others, who are eager to do so with infrastructure of their own.
马云表示，他想通过技术改变中国的制造业。阿里巴巴提供广告宣传和云计算等服务，根据收集的数据在不断完善这些服务。张勇则想利用这数据驱动的基础建设以支持其他业务。阿里巴巴已在中国实现了一些目标。不过，在阿里在国外投资时，它将面对亚马逊和其他竞争者，因为这些公司都想依靠自身的基础建设来发展业务。
编译：许聪
审校：丁晨
编辑：翻吧君
来源：经济学人