HONG KONG -- It was 2006, at a conference in San Francisco, and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos was crouched down in a packed auditorium attentively taking notes. Jack Ma, the founder of Alibaba, was introducing a hushed crowd to the company that would come to dominate China's e-commerce market. It would have been hard to imagine back then that Alibaba would eventually take on the American e-commerce giant in China and win.
Fast forward 17 years and Bezos might have another Chinese counterpart to worry about: PDD Holdings, the parent of domestic online retailer Pinduoduo and cross-border e-commerce platform Temu. With the backing of tech giant Tencent Holdings, PDD extended its domestic experience of Pinduoduo and embarked on a grand overseas push.
