SHANGHAI - US online seller Amazon announced Thursday it will increase its investment in Joyo.com, one of China's leading online shopping websites, according to an AFP report. 

The founder and CEO of Amazon, Jeff Bezos talks to the press during a news conference in Shanghai. US online seller Amazon said Thursday it will increase its investment in Joyo.com, one of China's leading online shopping websites.[AFP]

"This is our fastest-growing business anywhere in the world ... we are considering investing even more in this business," Jeff Bezos, chief executive of Amazon, was quoted by the report as saying.

But he did not provide any specific figure.

Loss-making Joyo has been growing fast since Amazon bought the Chinese company for 75 million dollars in 2004, with the products it sells increasing 32 times since then.

Bezos said the contribution of China, the world's fourth largest economy, to Amazon's revenue should reflect its double-digit economic growth.

Amazon currently achieves 54 percent of its sales outside the United States. "The percentage of sales should reflect (China's growth)," Bezos said at a press briefing.

"It's an achievable goal that China will become our fourth largest market in the world ... It's a long-term investment and we have the resources and patience."

Amazon said experience showed it took five to seven years to become profitable in a new market.

However, the Joyo unit still lags behind local player Dangdang.com, its main rival in China.

In the first quarter of 2007, Dangdang has a share of 18 percent of China's "business to customer", or B2C, Internet retailing market, compared with 12 percent for Joyo, according to Analysys International, a Beijing-based technology consulting firm.

Bezos acknowledged the problems foreign Internet companies might meet in China and said Amazon would avoid them.

"One of the mistakes that many American companies could make is that when they come to China and hire management team in China, the Chinese leader sees it as his or her job to make their boss happy in America instead of making their customers happy in China."

"We are not going to make that mistake," Bezos said.

The key advantage of Dangdang, which is also in red, is that its product selection is a bit wider than Amazon, Song Xing, analyst with Analysys International said. "But to be frank, I don't think the gap is that large."

He said China business-to-consumer, or B2C, industry was hampered by the country's underdeveloped logistics industry and the ubiquity of pirated products.

"But I'm still very optimistic about the B2C model," Song said, citing the potential for B2C websites in product categories such as books, where retail customers need easy access to a wide selection of a reliable quality.

"But I'm still quite optimistic about the B2C model especially in some particular category like books," Song said.

The transaction value of China's B2C market totalled 1.02 billion yuan (US$133 million) in the first quarter, compared with 854.3 million yuan a year earlier, according to Analysys International.