Recently, Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba submitted a business plan to the South Korean government.

In this business plan, Alibaba stated that in order to expand its business in South Korea, the company will invest $1.1 billion (approximately KRW 1447.1 billion) in the Korean market over the next three years. Alibaba predicts that through this investment, it is expected to directly or indirectly create 3000 job opportunities in the local area within the next three years.

The plan mentions that Alibaba will spend $200 million (approximately 263.2 billion Korean won) this year to build a comprehensive logistics center in South Korea, covering an area of 180000 square meters, equivalent to the size of 25 football fields. This will become the largest logistics center in terms of individual area in South Korea. After the logistics center is put into use, the logistics delivery time of Alibaba's cross-border e-commerce platform AliExpress will be greatly reduced, and the platform's competitiveness is expected to further improve.

In addition, Alibaba plans to invest $100 million (approximately KRW 131.6 billion) to help South Korean small and medium-sized enterprises sell their products to the global market. According to the plan, Alibaba will set up a procurement center in June this year to explore high-quality Korean products and open up global sales channels, creating a commodity export platform.

In addition to AliExpress, Alibaba also plans to sell Korean products on multiple e-commerce platforms of the group, such as Lazada in Southeast Asia and Miravia in Spain, with the goal of supporting 50000 Korean businesses to enter the global market within three years.

In the aforementioned business plan, Alibaba also mentioned that the company will invest $7.58 million (approximately 10 billion Korean won) to solve the criticized "counterfeit" problem in the Korean market.

Alibaba will officially establish a customer service center consisting of 300 professional customer service personnel to provide consultation and complaint services to consumers. For overseas products sold on AliExpress, Alibaba provides a no reason return service within 90 days. If consumers suspect that they have purchased counterfeit goods, a 100% refund will be provided. According to AliExpress, since October last year, the platform has taken down 5000 merchants suspected of selling counterfeit goods, with a total of approximately 1.8 million suspected counterfeit items taken down.

Data shows that as of February this year, the number of AliExpress global users in South Korea reached 7.18 million, more than double the 3.36 million in 2022.

The submission of Alibaba's business plan coincides with the South Korean government increasing its regulatory efforts on online shopping platforms, especially those from China.

Last Thursday (March 7th), South Korean personal data protection regulators stated that as South Korea's usage of Chinese e-commerce platforms such as AliExpress and Temu surged, regulators are investigating the processing of consumer data by major overseas shopping platforms.

The Personal Information Protection Commission of South Korea has been investigating overseas e-commerce platforms since last month. According to a statement by the committee, it is examining the appropriateness of personal information processing policies, overseas transmission, and security measures on overseas shopping platforms. And it stated that if there is any violation of Korean law, measures will be taken.

According to local reports, last week, South Korean antitrust regulatory authorities dispatched inspectors to the office of AliExpress's subsidiary in South Korea to investigate the platform's practices in protecting consumer data.Statistics show that in 2023, the total amount of goods purchased by Koreans from e-commerce platforms in China (including platforms such as AliExpress and Temu) increased by 121% year-on-year, reaching 3.3 trillion Korean won, accounting for nearly half of South Korea's total overseas e-commerce shopping sales.