A cross-border e-commerce park of US Amazon.com Inc located in Hangzhou, capital of East China's Zhejiang Province, goes into operation on Wednesday. Providing such services as branding, staff training and cross-border logistics, the retail giant aims to boost e-commerce business in Hangzhou and its neighboring areas. Photo: VCG

It seems that Amazon cannot sit idle while seeing China's market continues to develop rapidly as the US company returns on Monday with a window on a Chinese online platform in hopes of driving its cross-border e-commerce business, analysts said.

Amazon on Monday said it will open a pop-up store on China's e-commerce platform Pinduoduo. The US-based company closed its own Chinese online marketplace in July.

The store opened on Monday and will run until the end of December. It will carry about 1,000 overseas products from markets such as the US, the UK, Japan and Germany.

"Amazon's commitment to China remains strong and we will continue to invest and grow the Amazon Global Store business in China," the company told the Global Times on Monday.

The cooperation channel, which reads "global minimum price" can be easily found on the homepage of Pinduoduo's app.  

The cooperation with Pinduoduo, which woos customers with deep discounts and group-buying deals, is a low-cost operation model for Amazon, as it would help the US company, which closed its online e-commerce platform in China, avoid fierce competition in the Chinese online markets among dominant rivals such as Alibaba-backed Tmall and JD.com Inc, Lu Zhenwang, founder of Shanghai Wanqing Commerce Consulting, told the Global Times on Monday.

The tie-up acts as an endorsement for Pinduoduo, a start-up established in 2015 that has been focusing on markets in small cities and rural areas, to expand its presence in first- and second-tier cities in China and advance its cross-border business, Li Chengdong, a Beijing-based industry analyst, told the Global Times on Monday. 

With Amazon's strength in high-quality imported products in China and Pinduoduo's large customer base, Amazon looks forward to enabling customers to enjoy cross-border shopping through this store, in addition to more deals and tens of millions of products available on amazon.cn, according to the US company. 

The July closure of Amazon's Chinese marketplace reflected operational adjustments intended to focus the company's efforts on cross-border sales in China, Amazon told the Global Times in an earlier interview

"It's like Amazon is making an effort via Black Friday to test its attractiveness in the Chinese market. And if it succeeds, it will seek other forms of long-term cooperation in the future," said Lei Lei, a Beijing-based white-collar worker.

Lei told the Global Times on Monday that "the move will change my impression and position on Pinduoduo and such cooperation will reduce delivery fees for consumers who want to buy imported products.

During the first half of 2019, kaola.com ranked first among domestic cross-border e-commerce platforms, with a market share of 27.7 percent, followed by Tmall Global with 25.1 percent and pro.jd.com with 13.3 percent, according to Shenzhen-based data-mining company iiMedia research.

The rising consumption power in the Chinese market is attractive to foreign e-commerce platforms and Amazon would not want to miss the chance, analysts said, noting that the cooperation with Pinduoduo will not challenge the current dominance of domestic e-commerce giants.