MadeInChina.com, one of China's many foreign trade service providers and rival to Alibaba.com, has closed its Guangzhou office, which has only been operating for four months.

According to an employee of the Guangzhou office of MadeInChina.com who spoke with Hexun.com, the company was just founded in April 2008, but employees began to leave in June — instead of salaries, they received letters from the company pledging to make the payments in the future.

Zheng Min, CEO of the Guangzhou office of MadeInChina.com, admits that the performance and the capital turnover of the company are not good over the past half year, so MadeInChina.com decided to close this branch. Referring to the salaries and compensations of the employees, Zheng says the company will try to handle these problems before the end of September.

Zheng told local media that MadeInChina.com had a generally good performance in the first quarter of 2008, but its sales in the second and third quarters experienced unexpected declines because the foreign trade situation is not good.