China Colonizes the World, Indonesia’s Neighbor Already Dominated
Jakarta, CNBC Indonesia – China is increasingly spreading its business wings in the global market through various sectors. Starting from electric cars, smartphones, to e-commerce.
Most recently, the online shopping application Taobao, a subsidiary of the e-commerce giant Alibaba, has succeeded in dominating the Apple App Store app store chart in Singapore.
This achievement was achieved after Taobao released an English version in the neighboring country whose translation was carried out by an artificial intelligence (AI) system.
According to market intelligence firm Sensor Tower, Taobao ranked first in the Apple App Store Singapore for all categories earlier this week.
Before releasing the English version, the Taobao application was already quite popular and perched in the ‘Top 10’ shopping applications for iPhone users in Singapore since mid-August.
“The new update marks Taobao’s dedication to serving Singaporean users,” Alibaba said in its official statement, quoted from CNBC International, Friday (13/9/2024).
In its statement, Taobao wrote that it was increasing the accessibility of the application for non-Chinese users. This means that Singaporeans no longer need to use manual translation when trying out the application.
Taobao and Tmall are by far Alibaba’s biggest sources of revenue. Previously, both applications exclusively served users in China with a fully Chinese interface.
Taobao and Tmall Group in the quarter ending June 2024 managed to earn 26.55 billion yuan in revenue, up 6% year-on-year.
Over the past few years, Alibaba has indeed been aggressively expanding its business into international markets through platforms such as Alibaba.com and AliExpress.
Singapore and Malaysia are the first markets to be introduced to the Taobao English update.
Previously, Taobao users in Singapore were busy sharing how to buy clothes, furniture, and other lifestyle products on Taobao, because it was still entirely in Chinese.
The tutorial videos were widely shared via TikTok. Some videos were able to gain a large number of views of more than 10,000. Some collected views of up to 105,000.
“There are many Chinese companies that have global ambitions and are able to innovate quickly, and build domestic businesses that benefit their position in the international market,” said Bain’s senior partner, David Zehner.
Singapore and Malaysia themselves are two Southeast Asian countries that are quite easy to be ‘colonized’ by China. This is because both countries have quite a large population of Chinese descent.
A government report at the end of June 2023 showed that almost 3/4 of Singapore’s population of 5.92 million people are of Chinese descent. Then, 20% of Singapore’s population is also ethnically Chinese.
China Colonizes Indonesia
Previously, a report from KPMG revealed the trend of people using products from China for their daily inspiration. For example, fashion style through content on TikTok.
KPMG conducted a survey of 7,000 consumers aged 18-24 years or Gen Z. They are spread across 14 countries, including Indonesia, Singapore, and China.
The majority of Gen Z (63%) said they shopped through social commerce. More than half of those surveyed (57%) used live streaming on e-commerce.
TikTok Shop, a shopping service from TikTok, is also known to be a place for Gen Z to shop. Quoting CNBC International, those who do it come from Indonesia, China, Vietnam, and the Philippines.
The results of this survey show that China is increasingly colonizing Indonesia. Including through the social commerce industry from TikTok which also comes from that country.
“The combination of social media and e-commerce attracts Gen Z’s attention because the method is relevant to them,” said Irwan Djaja, partner and chief advisor of KPMG Indonesia.
Brands are also trying to get noticed by Gen Z consumers. They are rearranging their supply chain strategies by emphasizing social commerce platforms.
In particular, they focus on TikTok and Instagram. Both platforms are known as places for influencers to recommend products.
“TikTok is a weapon. The platform is still growing with a large viewer base and influence,” said Eric Pong, co-founder of AfterShip, a software-as-a-service (SaaS) company for e-commerce experiences.
China is also known to be trying to attract more people from outside the country to consume domestic products. This effort is carried out through draft regulations on the construction of overseas warehouses and expanding cross-border e-commerce businesses.
SOURCE : CNBC INDONESIA
