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It’s not enough to truly compete with Alibaba or JD.com, but it may be the precursor to future moves in China

Amazon is laying the bricks for its e-commerce service in China by launching its Prime option, including free shipping, in Asia’s largest country, according to a report from Bloomberg.

Starting today, Chinese Amazon Prime members will get free shipping on all orders over CNY200 (US$29.50) on a large portion of the overseas goods. Domestic goods will also be delivered for free.

Membership will cost CNY388 (US$57.25) per year, which is significantly cheaper than the US membership cost of US$99 per year.

Amazon said that its global logistics network will facilitate the delivery in China, the Bloomberg article reported. International delivery time is expected to take five to nine days in 82 cities.

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Amazon has never allocated the necessary resources to compete in China, as it has placed far more import on winning the India market.

The new service is not enough to let Amazon compete directly with Alibaba in China, but Amazon Prime was been lauded as an important customer loyalty programme and the US e-commerce giant may be laying the groundwork for future moves.

In many ways, what Amazon is doing is similar to what Alibaba does in India — not investing enough to conquer the market, but pulling some market share away from a global rival.

However, in China, Amazon’s other major competition is the JD.com-Walmart duo. The two companies have been working together to compete with Alibaba. Walmart has a strong offline presence in China and JD.com is Alibaba’s major e-commerce competition in the country.

Also Read: Beyond e-commerce play, Alibaba will leverage AI and machine learning to dominate as a ‘great tech company’

Single’s Day is about two weeks away in China (November 11) and Alibaba is already predicting it will beat its own 24-hour sales record set last year. It will be interesting to see if Amazon can grab some the the Single’s Day market away from Alibaba.

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