China's e-commerce market is the largest in the world by far. With an expected 16% growth this year, online sales will reach a whopping $2.1 trillion and account for more than half of all e-commerce sales globally. This is an exciting growth story for investors, especially with China's middle class expected to grow to be 630 million people by 2022 and account for $3.4 trillion in annual spending. Let's take a deeper look at two of the leading e-commerce operators in the region to see which one is the better investment today.
JD.com (NASDAQ: JD) and Alibaba (NYSE: BABA) operate in China as e-commerce businesses, but the way they make money is considerably different. JD.com acts as an online retailer that buys products from over 24,000 suppliers and sells these goods on its platform. Eighty-nine percent of its revenue comes from product sales, two-thirds of which is from electronics and home appliances. It also has a third party business that supports 270,000 merchants.
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Source Fool.com