Alibaba, Tencent in race to be China's one-stop online shop

Shanghai

ALIBABA and Tencent spent more than US$8 billion last year alone backing often strikingly similar ventures, as the Chinese Internet giants race to create online one-stop shops to win the digital loyalty of a tenth of the world's population.

Before China became the biggest smartphone market, there was little overlap between the businesses of e-commerce leader Alibaba Group Holding, social networking firm Tencent Holdings and search engine provider Baidu.