Amazon’s China Strategy: No Marketplace, Just a Tmall Store

In 2019, Amazon, the company that flattened retail almost everywhere it landed, quietly shut its marketplace in China. The headlines called it a failure. A US giant beaten by Alibaba and JD. That story is half true and completely beside the point. Amazon did not give up on China. It gave up on one bad idea and kept the good ones.

What Amazon actually closed, and what it kept

Amazon closed Amazon.cn, its local marketplace where Chinese sellers listed to Chinese buyers. That was the part it was losing. Tmall and JD already owned that game, and no amount of money was going to change it.

Here is what Amazon kept, and grew. It runs the Amazon Global Store, the cross-border channel that lets Chinese shoppers buy imported products. And instead of dragging those shoppers to its own site, Amazon opened a flagship store on Tmall Global, Alibaba’s own platform. In July 2025 it even ran an Amazon Day promotion for Chinese consumers with tens of thousands of international brands. On top of that sits Amazon Global Selling, the business that helps Chinese factories and brands sell to the rest of the world. That side prints money.

So Amazon did not retreat. It stopped trying to own the mall and rented the best window inside the mall everyone already visits.

The lesson most foreign brands miss

Everyone tells you to build your big China presence first. Your own store, your own platform, your own island. That is how most foreign brands burn their cash. They spend a year building something beautiful that nobody can find, because the buyers are all somewhere else.

Amazon, with all its money, looked at that math and said no. It went where the buyers already are. If the company that wrote the book on e-commerce decides not to fight Alibaba head on, you probably should not either. Meet your buyers on the platforms they already open every day, and spend your energy on being the brand they choose once they get there.

So do I even need my own Chinese website?

Yes, but not as your store. This is the part founders get backwards. Your Tmall or JD shop is where the transaction happens. Your website is where trust happens. Before a Chinese buyer spends money, they search your name on Baidu. If the top result is a real Mandarin site, a few news mentions and some honest discussion, they trust you and click buy. If it is a blank page, they move on, no matter how nice your Tmall store looks.

So the order is simple. Build the trust layer first: a Chinese site that ranks on Baidu, real content, real proof. Then let the marketplace do what it does best, take the order.

Where we come in

We are a team of 50 in Shanghai who build that trust layer for startups and small brands. We get you ranking on Baidu, write real Chinese content, and make sure that when a buyer searches your name before checking out on Tmall, they find proof you are worth it. If you are weighing how to enter China without lighting your budget on fire, tell us where you are and we will give you a straight answer.

Jon Wang is a no-nonsense business man who knows Chinese ecommerce and distribution inside out and focuses on practical solutions that move product.

SEO Agency China, a team of 50 in Shanghai. We help foreign brands grow in China. Talk to us.