The "auction war" in china.

``China could potentially be as big as the U.S., or bigger. If I were EBay, I would still be very closely watching Yahoo.''

-- Safa Rashtchy, an analyst at Piper Jaffray Cos. in Menlo Park, California, comments on EBay Inc.'s competition in China from Yahoo! Inc. and sina's nine-month-old 1Pai.com online auction site.


EBay, the world's largest Internet auctioneer, faces a threat to its No. 1 position in China, the biggest battleground after the U.S. in a global market for Internet-auctioned goods worth more than $30 billion. The value of goods sold in Chinese online auctions will more than quadruple by 2006 to $973.8 million, according to Shanghai iResearch, a Web research firm.
1Pai.com's appeal to Chinese users helped propel Sunnyvale, California-based Yahoo to fourth place among Chinese online auctioneers in its first three months, according to Yahoo spokesman Scott Morris. Yahoo has already prevented EBay from repeating its U.S. and European dominance in Japan and Taiwan.

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Link to yahoo/sina auction site.