Taobao is bigger than Walmart

OK, just in China. Still, it's an impressive figure according to this Xinhua report posted on the HKTDC web site. It notes "The transaction volume of Taobao.com...more than doubled to 16.9 billion yuan (2.11 billion U.S. dollars) last year, up 110 percent from the 8.02 billion yuan in 2005.... The figure topped the annual turnover of traditional retail giants Lotus at 10 billion yuan and Wal-Mart at 9.93 billion yuan in 2006".

Now the boys at Alibaba/Taobao just have to work out how to make some money from all that activity.