Alibaba’s new business – modernising China’s plants

Helping industries: A cyclist rides past the Alibaba building in Beijing. Alibaba is betting that its years of observing consumer behaviour will be useful to China’s producers, at a time Beijing is championing what it calls its “Industrial Internet” of smart factories. — Bloomberg

BEIJING: Alibaba Group Holding Ltd helped modernise brick-and-mortar retail with consumer data and online services. Now it hopes to do the same for China’s multitrillion-dollar manufacturing arena.

China’s largest corporation unveiled a factory it’s been operating under wraps for the past three years on the outskirts of its hometown of Hangzhou, churning out apparel for clothing merchants on its Taobao and Tmall marketplaces.