eBay China begins to wilt

Back in October, we talked about Alibaba.com turning up the heat on Ebay in China with its taobao.com site. Now, we see from the ChinaStockBlog that the heat is beginning to have an effect. EBay is dropping charges for opening 'stores' within its China system. As taobao.com has promised free service through 2008, that may not be the last charge that Ebay has to drop in China to attract small business users. Once they're both free - what do you bet? 6 months - then taobao's traffic-building approach will begin to look the smarter of the two.

Is Meg Whitman going to be spending her Christmas holidays in China too?

Update: More on this at Red Herring which quotes Jack Ma as saying this "too little, too late. The game is already over.”