Alibaba faces fine in Taiwan over registration data

Taobao had more than 500,000 registered users in Taiwan as of 2013, with annual sales of NT$50 billion ($1.56 billion), as calculated by Taobao.

More surprisingly, cities in Taiwan accounted for four positions among the top 10 cities having the biggest spenders on Alipay, the payments service of Alibaba. Chiayi in southwestern Taiwan overtook Hangzhou, where Alibaba is based, to crown the list.

Local e-commerce platforms in Taiwan are dwarfed by the mainland e-commerce goliath. The shopping platform of Yahoo, which is the most popular in Taiwan, has annual sales revenue equivalent to about 2.4 billion yuan, while PChome, another leading online shopping site, achieved similar annual sales revenue.

However, Taobao and Tmall each achieved annual sales revenue exceeding 1 trillion yuan by 2012.

Wang Jen-tang, director-general of the Taipei Computer Association, has warned that mainland online shopping platforms could hamper the growth of Taiwan's e-commerce industry.

Bryan Fu, general manager of Alibaba's Taiwan affiliate, noted earlier that business-to-business exporters in Taiwan were at least three years behind their mainland peers.

In a summit held in Taipei in late December, Vincent Siew, honorary chairman of the Cross-Straits Common Market Foundation, said that Alibaba's networks are the best and fastest way for products made in Taiwan to enter the mainland market.

Jack Ma, founder and executive chairman of Alibaba, announced on Monday the establishment of a NT$10 billion fund to help young entrepreneurs in Taiwan set up businesses on Alibaba's online platforms so that they can expand their products and services to other parts of China.

Meng Jing in Beijing contributed to this story.