Retail giant Walmart, has announced that it has sold its Chinese ecommerce branch to the country's second largest online store, JD.Yihaodian, which Walmart had previously paid 760 million dollars for the ownership of, specialises in groceries and is now amongst the top ten ecommerce sites in China.However, with JD now taking the reins, Yihaodian now represents a step up for JD in taking the fight to Alibaba, which has itself recently moved into grocery sales.JD said of the deal that “customers will gain access to a wide range of new and imported items”, which would see it brought into direct competition with Alibaba's Tmall.Imported foods is a growing market in China with cross-border spending in China tripling from 2014 10 85.5 billion US dollars.This goes some way to explaining JD's recent purchase, which will save the company money by using Walmart's pre-existing supply chains.
