Alibaba site offers channel to foreign products

Alibaba Group Holding Ltd, China's e-commerce giant, officially launched an independent website on Wednesday to allow overseas brands and merchants to sell directly to Chinese online shoppers.

The site, named Tmall Global, which has an independent domain, www.tmall.hk, will be operated independently as a subsidiary company of Alibaba. The move signals the company's strong push into overseas business, said analysts.

According to Alibaba's statement on Wednesday, the newly launched international platform provides genuine products that are 100 percent produced or sold in overseas markets. All the vendors doing business on the platform are outside China.