Xinhua News Agency and Alibaba Group entered a strategic alliance on Nov 28 in Hangzhou, capital city of east China’s Zhejiang province.

Jack Ma, CEO and founder of Alibaba Group

According to the agreement, Xinhua News Agency will make full use of the information gathering networks and massive capacity in information processing and transmission to provide various types of information on macro economy, industry, policy, marketing, etc to Alibaba Group, a privately owned Hangzhou-based family of Internet-based businesses.

At the signing ceremony, Wang Guoping, secretary of the CPC Hangzhou Municipal Committee, said it was a great honor for Hangzhou to hold the ceremony. “Hangzhou’s development cannot do without the care and support from Xinhua News Agency. Alibaba, pride of Hangzhou city, created miracles with culture and computers in such a meager city without minerals, ports or policy resources.”

Xinhua News Agency will also set up a professional analyst team and R&D team to arrange, process and analyze real-time and no-limit data on E-commerce provided by Alibaba Group, providing important references for government organizations, economic departments and SMEs, according to Xinhua.

“Last year, we saw changes from different kinds of order data, which helped us survive the financial crisis. However, the data will play a big role with the professional analysis of Xinhua News Agency, which will help the nation and the whole world,” said Jack Ma, CEO and founder of Alibaba Group.

Lu Wei, vice president of Xinhua News Agency, praised the alliance as “win-win cooperation”, adding, “Xinhua News Agency, faced with the historical transformation need from single medium to multimedia, is actively coping with the comprehensive challenges brought by new media and new technologies. We will provide information for the news channel of the Yahoo China website.”

The Xinhua News Agency is the official press agency of the government of the People's Republic of China (PRC) and the biggest center for collecting information at press conferences in the PRC. Xinhua is an institution of the State Council of China and reports directly to the Communist Party of China's Publicity Department and Public Information Department.

One of three largest press agencies in the world, Xinhua has branches in over 100 countries and broadcasts news about China to the world in such languages as Chinese, English, Spanish, French and Japanese.

Founded by Ma Yun (Jack Ma) in 1999, Alibaba Group operates five e-commerce sub-companies operating different aspects of trading, including business-to-business trade, retail, payment, business management software and classified listings.

By Linda