Japanese e-commerce in China

This Reuters piece is a bit confusing. It talks about Japanese e-commerce company Rakuten entering the Chinese market. It talks of on-line shopping malls which suggests B2C activity but then goes on to talk about China's Rmb46 billion (US$5.9 billion) B2B e-commerce market (sounds like an ambitious figure to me) and says that Rakuten will be competing with the likes of Alibaba.com.

The tag line "Shopping is Entertainment" certainly sounds like the world of B2C. Of course, if it were to be launching in Hong Kong, it would say "Shopping is our National Sport".

Rakuten already owns part of the leading Chinese travel portal, Ctrip.