Speaking at a conference, eBay CEO Meg Whitman touted China as its biggest long-term opportunity in terms of local markets. eBay has been publicly bullish on China as its growth rate in more mature markets slows.

Whitman was speaking at the 2005 Fortune Global Forum in Beijing, China on Monday. Wire services quote her saying, "If we are good and we execute, ultimately China could be eBay's largest local market in a five to 10 year period."

eBay operates around the world and links to sites in 26 countries on its eBay.com home page. It dominates the peer-to-peer auction marketplace in the U.S. but faces competition in some geographic regions. In China, eBay competes with Alibaba's Taobao.com, which says it has 4.5 million registered members. It also competes with Alibaba itself, an established business-to-business site with 4.8 million registered users. Alibaba reports that its sites trade between 220 countries and territories across 27 industries.

At the Fortune conference, Whitman said she thinks eBay's PayPal payment system has a role to play in China. PayPal also faces competition in that country from Alibaba.com's AliPay online payment platform.

Speaking at the same conference, Yahoo CEO Terry Semel also expects China to be an important part of his company's business, according to news-wires. eBay exited Japan in 2002 finding it impossible to fight Yahoo there.

In January, eBay said it would spend $100 million in China and reported it had 10 million registered users in that country.

Links of coverage to Whitman's speech at the 2005 Fortune Global Forum:

Reuters
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=technologyNews&storyID=8498915

Forbes
http://www.forbes.com/home/feeds/afx/2005/05/16/afx2028789.html