Alibaba Group’s first eWTP hub outside of China has gone live in Malaysia. The milestone follows Alibaba’s partnership with the Malaysian Digital Economy Corporation (MDEC) to work jointly to enable Malaysian small and medium-sized enterprises to benefit from global trade.

Serving as a ‘one-stop solution center’ for local businesses, the country office is designed to engage with existing local partners, help Malaysian businesses identify global cross-border trade opportunities, as well as to support the country’s technology innovation through cloud computing services.

Alibaba announced the launch of ‘Malaysia Week’, a special online promotion initiative that seeks to attract Chinese consumers to buy all-things Malaysian from the 6th to the 12th of July 2018. The Malaysia Week campaign is set to showcase an array of ‘Must-see’, ‘Must-eat’, and ‘Must-experience’ Malaysian products and tourism across Alibaba’s platforms.

More than 50 Malaysian brands, featuring a wide range of product categories, will be showcased, in addition to a whole host of exciting promotional activities to be launched during the period.

Malaysia Week

‘Malaysia week’ is the result of fruitful discussions between Alibaba Group and Malaysia since the launch of eWTP. Other milestones in the development of Alibaba Group’s support for Malaysia’s digital economy, include:

• Logistics. Commenced construction of a smart e-fulfillment hub in Kuala Lumpur under a Cainiao-MAHB joint venture to enable speedy storage, fulfillment, customs clearance, and warehousing operations.
• Cloud computing. Opened a local internet data center to provide Malaysian enterprises a local choice to build their businesses and run their applications on powerful, reliable and secure world-class global cloud platform.
• Training. Trained thousands of individuals, entrepreneurs and cloud computing professionals under various programs in conjunction with leading Malaysian universities and government agencies to support Malaysia’s sustainable e-commerce development.
• E-commerce. Launched Malaysia Pavilion on Alibaba.com to promote quality Malaysian products to global buyers.
  • Established a one-stop platform to provide export facilitation with services ranging from marketing and customs clearance to streamlined permit application procedures and tax declaration and more.
  • Hosted March Expo with MDEC and MATRADE to connect Malaysian wholesalers with global sales opportunities.
  • Held “Access to China Consumers” seminar to help Malaysian exporters enter the China market with the participation of more than 500 Malaysian merchants.
  • Announced the launch of Malaysia Week in July 2018 to promote a broad range of Malaysian products and services to China’s consumers.

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In the first half of 2017, the number of Chinese who went to Japan exceeded 3.282 million, showing an increase of 6.67%. Compared to the growth rate of more than 20% in the past two years, growth significantly slowed down.

In the first half of 2017, Chinese travellers in Korea dropped by 40.97% to 2.253 million. However, the total number of Chinese passengers to Southeast Asia (SEA) soared, exceeding 10 million people in half a year. Therefore, it can be assumed that there is a shift in the travel demand from Japan and South Korea to countries in SEA.

Chinese Tourism to Thailand 

In September 2016, since Thailand rectified its “zero tour fees” policy, with the addition of the king’s passing, China’s tourism market to Thailand was impacted. In the first half of 2017, recovery is seen for China’s tourism market in Thailand, hitting about 4.712 million people, only down slightly by 3.8%.

From the Sino-Thai aviation market’s observation, regardless of the impact of the Spring Festival factors, the capacity from January-July 2017 has already exceeded the same period in 2016. Looking to the second half of 2017, despite the late Thailand king’s funeral in October 2017 which is likely to impact the industry, the number of Chinese tourists in Thailand is still likely to exceed last year, having a breakthrough of 9 million people.

Chinese Tourists to Cambodia 

In recent years, the number of Chinese travellers to Cambodia has grown steadily. In 2016, 830,000 Chinese travellers visited Cambodia, an increase of 19.47%. In the first half of 2017, Cambodia received 2.66 million international tourists, an increase of 12.8%, of which Chinese tourists accounted for 530,000 tourists, an increase of 39.9%.

From the current trend, the number of Chinese tourists to Cambodia is expected to exceed 1 million people in 2017. It is also worth mentioning that, with the continued warming of Sino-Cambodian relations, the number of business travellers to Cambodia has increased rapidly.

Chinese Tourists to Vietnam

From January-July 2017, the number of Chinese travellers in Vietnam is 2.217 million people, a substantial increase of 51%, with Vietnam becoming the most travelled to the destination in SEA for Chinese tourists. In the second half of 2017, if Sino-Vietnamese relations are stable, the total number of Chinese travellers in Vietnam in the entire year is expected to have a breakthrough of 4 million people.

Chinese Tourists to Singapore

Currently, Singapore only has the numbers from January-May 2017, whereby the number of Chinese tourists in Singapore reached 1.335 million, an increase of 6.67%. Following Singapore Airlines Air Navigation and Tiger Airways’ complete integration, there are plans to continue to expand China Airlines’ routes. From the observation of current trends, the number of Chinese travellers in Singapore in 2017 is expected to exceed 3 million people.

Chinese Tourists to Malaysia 

Currently, Malaysia has also only released numbers from January-May 2017, and the number of Chinese tourists in Malaysia reached 905,300, an increase of 7.79%. From the current market situation, the number of Chinese passengers travelling to Malaysia has been restored to the number pre-“Malaysia Airlines” incident.

Benefitting from China and ASEAN’s open sky policy and low-cost aviation development, the aviation market between China and ASEAN countries continue to grow. There is also a trend of development towards small countries (eg. Brunei) and small cities (eg. Hat Yai, Cambodia).

Since the market size is expanded, competition is heightened, and even small charter companies tried to adopt the China aviation route. In the open market system, however, continued efforts are still required to promote the healthy development of the aviation market and to have orderly competition.