China is home to 730 million Internet users, it accounts for 40 percent of global retail e-commerce, and its mobile payment market is a whopping 11 times the size of the U.S. market.
“Whether we’re talking about transactions, technology, or money, China really stands out,” said McKinsey senior partner Jonathan Woetzel this week at Fortune’s Brainstorm Tech International Conference in Guangzhou, China.
And this is only the beginning for China’s astronomical growth in the e-commerce space, Wortzel said. For one, China is still in the early days of the country’s middle-class boom. In other words, more than 300 million middle-class consumers with rising disposable incomes are propelling the consumption of China.
Zhang Xuhao is one Chinese entrepreneur who is taking advantage of this emerging trend. Xuhao is the CEO of Ele.me, China’s leading food delivery startup, which is valued at approximately $6bn and counts Alibaba and Tencent among its investors.
“In China, more and more people don’t want to go out,” Xuhao said at the conference. “There are traffic jams, there are parking fees, so I think it’s a very reliable way for people to get food.”
