B2B transactions soaring in China

There's a very interesting piece on the China Daily site which reports B2B transactions rising sharply in the PRC. It reports:

Business-to-business (B2B) transactions hit 1,250 billion yuan ($168.9 billion) in China last year, up 25.5 percent from 2006, according to a survey released on Tuesday.

The "Netguide 2008" survey, which provides a wrap-up of 2007, polled more than 300 web sites and about 200 enterprises, with 50,786 interviewees around the country.

It goes on to note the Alibaba.com has a 70% market share.

Continued steady growth is expected with the report forecasting that "China's B2B trade volume will exceed 1,620 billion yuan in 2008 and 2,130 billion yuan in 2009". That's 30% this year and 31% next.

Now, if the media sites can start to work out ways to take some share of these transactions rather than just facilitating them, then there's clearly much money to be made. Unfortunately, the B2B media has been grappling with that conundrum since about 1996 and doesn't seem to have made too much progress.