According to Jack Ma, CEO of the Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba, to help and attract small companies in North America to export more goods to China, the company is now seeking cooperative partners in the United States and it has started discussions with companies such as Google, eBay, Yahoo, and Microsoft.

During his recent investigation in the United States, during which he spoke at such venues as the Asia Society in New York, Ma said it is still early to talk about what kind of agreements they will achieve, but he believes Alibaba will finally realize cooperative relationships with these companies.

This move for Alibaba reportedly aims to reduce the company's dependency on Chinese foreign trade companies. According to the statistics released by China's General Administration of Customs, China's export volume decreased by 26% in February 2009. To attract new users, Alibaba plans to invest USD30 million in overseas marketing in 2009. At present, Alibaba has one million American users in the B2B market. The problem Alibaba will face is that the foreign market is so disparate, so targeted marketing activities will be difficult for Alibaba unless it works on focusing in vertical areas.

John Donahoe, CEO of eBay, said the company holds an open attitude towards the cooperation with Alibaba. He said Alibaba's payment system Alipay has a good performance in China's online payment sector and eBay's PayPal payment system also operates well in and out of China. With the cooperation, the two companies will be able to integrate both payment platforms.