Chinese online auction website Taobao.com has started construction of its new headquarters, Taobao City in the Yuhang district of Hangzhou, and the project will cost about CNY1.36 billion.

Taobao City is planned as the new office building of Taobao.com, which is a subsidiary of Chinese e-commerce company Alibaba. The construction of the Taobao City will reportedly be divided into two phases, which will be both completed in the next five years. Upon its completion, the 1,700 employees of Taobao.com will all move to the Taobao City.

In addition, an entrepreneur zone will be specially created in the project, providing a place for Taobao.com to nurture more medium and small-sized e-commerce vendors in the future.

When asked about Taobao.com's big move during the financial crisis, Lu Weixing, a spokesperson from Taobao.com, says this project was already decided at the end of 2007. In addition, statistics put forward by Lu to local media show that Taobao.com solves job problems of more than 400,000 Chinese people in 2008 and more than one million indirectly get hired with the help of Taobao.com. Taobao.com predicts that in 2009 more than 600,000 people will gain direct and full employment with the help of the website and more than two million will gain indirect employment.

Lu adds that the investment for the Taobao City will mainly come from its parent company Alibaba Group's previous investment.

Prior to this, Alibaba Group had announced plans to invest CNY5 billion in Taobao.com.