樂，學中文、教中文。/Enjoy learning &Teaching Chinese

By JANE A. PETERSON October 23, 2017

https://cn.nytimes.com/business/20171023/alibaba-amazon-southeast-asia-lazada/en-us/

新加坡——中國的阿里巴巴從這個位於一個擁有巨大潛力的網購新市場邊上的水泥倉庫出發，一棵生菜一棵生菜地擊敗亞馬遜。

SINGAPORE — From this concrete warehouse perched on the edge of a potentially vast new market for online shopping, the Alibaba Group of China hopes to beat Amazon one head of lettuce at a time.

在熒光燈的強光下，穿著綠色馬甲的工人仔細地將水果、奶酪和其他易腐食品包裝好，用貨車運送到群體越來越大的新加坡網購愛好者那裡。附近的一面牆上，貼著一些紙，上面打印著用戶曾經抱怨過的各種缺陷：鱷梨過熟，菠菜發臭，香瓜爛了。

Under the glare of fluorescent lights, green-vested workers carefully wrap fruit, cheese and other perishables for delivery by vans to a growing group of Singaporeans who prefer to do their shopping online. On a nearby wall, printouts show the sorts of defects that customers have complained about in the past: overripe avocados, smelly spinach, rotten honeydews.

「情況越來越好，但這是一個持續的過程，永遠不會有終點，」新加坡生鮮網購公司RedMart的總裁維克拉姆·魯伯尼(Vikram Rupani)表示。這裡是阿里巴巴在新加坡地區布局的一個據點。

“It’s getting better and better,” said Vikram Rupani, president of RedMart, an online grocery company based in Singapore that is part of Alibaba’s push into the region, “but it’s a continuous process that never ends.”

阿里巴巴和亞馬遜是各自國內市場的電商霸主。它們在中立區的競爭正在變得日益激烈。

Alibaba and Amazon already dominate the business of selling stuff online in their home markets. Increasingly, they are competing against each other on neutral ground.

兩個公司都在亞洲花費了數十億美元——特別是在東南亞和印度，它們希望找到一個地方，可以複製中國一舉成為世界最大網購市場的那種爆炸式巨變。

Both are spending billions of dollars on Asia — particularly Southeast Asia and India — as they look for a place that could repeat China’s explosive transformation into the world’s biggest online shopping market.

亞馬遜承諾在印度投入50億美元，吸引該國用戶註冊Prime會員，其中包括西方影視節目，而年費只是美國99美元（約合人民幣650元）年費的幾分之一。阿里巴巴在印度最大的移動支付平台Paytm及其電商公司Paytm Mall上有大約5億美元的投資。

Amazon has committed $5 billion to India, where it lures customers to sign up for its Prime service, which includes Western movies and television shows, for a small fraction of the $99 annual membership price in the United States. Alibaba has invested roughly $500 million for stakes in both Paytm — India’s largest mobile payments platform — and its e-commerce affiliate, Paytm Mall.

阿里巴巴在東南亞壓下了更大的賭注。迄今它已經花費了逾20億美元來控制位於新加坡的網購公司拉扎達(Lazada)，該公司於5年前創辦，目前在6個國家開展業務。拉扎達去年還收購了網上零售雜貨店RedMart。

Alibaba’s bigger bet is in Southeast Asia. It has spent more than $2 billion to take control of Lazada, a five-year-old online shopping company based in Singapore and doing business in six countries. Last year, Lazada bought RedMart, the online retail grocery.