Alibaba forecasts drop in Chinese export growth

In the midst of a week-long tour of the U.K., Alibaba.com CEO David Wei has made some interesting statements. The online B2B giant is forecasting a significant slowdown of China's export growth in the second half of this year. With some 47 million registered users Alibaba.com is actually in quite a strong position to monitor the demand for products from China. The good news is that despite a significant forecast drop, the company still expects double digit export growth in 2010.

"Chief Executive David Wei said international inquiries were down for the Chinese manufacturers using Alibaba and he expected export growth to fall from 30% to 10% by the end of this year."

Wei also revealed that Alibaba shares its data with the Chinese government which is not surprising, but interesting to see this fact stated so explicitly:

"Alibaba monitors the transactions taking place among its business users and sends monthly reports to the Chinese government about international demand for Chinese products.

Alibaba.com as 47 million registered users - of which 12 million are based outside of China. Its online payment platform, Alipay, has 330 million registered users. Monitoring activity on those two platforms alone would give Alibaba solid insights into the state of the Chinese export machine.

No doubt Beijing will soon be asking Alibaba what should be done about the yuan revaluation.

Global Sources goes to Miami

Global Sources has quietly posted, without any press releases, a new set of exhibitions in Miami on its website.

The exhibition will cover a wide range of product categories including: gifts & premiums, home products, fashion accessories, garments & textiles, and baby & children's products.

The dates listed for these new China Sourcing Fairs are 11-13 July 2011 at the Miami Beach Convention Centre - although the exhibition is not yet listed on the MBCC's website. The venue has about 45,000 sqm of exhibition space.

This would be Global Sources' first China Sourcing Fair held in the U.S. In the past year, Global Sources has announced new editions of these exhibitions in Singapore and Johannesburg.