Chinese business-to-business e-commerce group Alibaba has announced the establishment of its education subsidiary in Hangzhou, Zhejiang.

The newly established company is attached to Alibaba's B2B listed company. David Wei, CEO of Alibaba, said at the opening ceremony of this new company that a lack of talents will limit the development of small and medium-sized enterprises in China. Alibaba's education subsidiary will focus on the training of e-commerce and management talents for small enterprises to solve their problems.

Deng Kangming, president of the education company, told local media that the company aims to build a bridge between university students and small enterprises worldwide to solve both the employment of university students and the talent shortage of small enterprises. Deng said that the company will achieve scale and industrialized Internet business education in the next three years, with the aims of promoting employment of 100,000 people, training one million people, and developing 10 million users.

According to a research report published by Alibaba's education subsidiary, Chinese enterprises' demands for e-commerce talents have been increasing and over 2.3 million new employees were needed in 2008. However, only 41% of these vacancies have been filled and over one million people are needed in the e-commerce sector in China.