I wrote back in May about Alibaba Group and its many well positioned assets that make this still private company one to watch as it is highly unlikely that anyone will beat them.

Pacific Epoch has shared the latest China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC) online shopping statistics for 1H-08 and Alibaba Group’s Taobao.com continues to leave all other competitors in the dust. Check out these statistics:

- Online shopping transactions in China reached RMB16.2 billion (US$2.3 billion) in 19 developed cities including Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen during the period.

- Over half of the total, RMB8.4 billion, came from male consumers while RMB3.1 billion was attributed to students.

- The top five e-commerce sites based on online shopping penetration rates were Alibaba Group’s consumer-to-consumer (C2C) site Taobao.com (81.5%), Dangdang.com (16.6%), Amazon’s China subsidiary Joyo (13.6%), Tom Online and eBay’s (Nasdaq: EBAY) Eachnet (8.4%), and Tencent’s (0700.HK) C2C site Paipai.com (7.2%).

- According to the report, 91% of online shoppers who have heard of Taobao have made purchases on the site, while 61.4% percent of those familiar with Joyo had shopped there.