SHOPPERS will spend record sums online in the next few weeks—in China for Singles Day on November 11th, in America on Black Friday and around the world in the run-up to Christmas. E-commerce has been growing by 20% a year for a decade, shaking up industries from logistics to consumer goods. Nowhere does debate rage more fiercely about what this means than in America, where thousands of stores have shut this year and where retailing accounts for one in nine jobs.

在接下来的几个星期里，即在中国双十一，美国的黑色星期五以及世界各地即将迎来的圣诞节，消费者的网购数额将创新高。十年来，电商每年以20%的速度增长，重塑了物流和消费品行业。在美国，没有哪个问题能比对电商发展的争论更为激烈了。在电商冲击下，美国本年度有数千家商店关门，而零售业的工作岗位占到了10%。

Astonishingly, online shopping has only just got started. Last year it amounted to a mere 8.5% of the world’s retail spending. In America the share was about 10%. Its effects on business and society will be huge. Not just because retailing is a big employer that touches many industries, but also because its two greatest exponents, Jack Ma and Jeff Bezos, the founders of Alibaba and Amazon, have used it to amass a new sort of conglomerate (see our special report). The question is whether its creation will foster competition or demand restraint.

令人惊讶的是，网购才刚刚起步。去年，网购只占了世界零售业支出的8.5%，在美国的份额约为10%。电商对企业和社会的影响将是巨大的。不仅仅是因为零售业涉及许多行业，还是因为它的两个最大的倡导者——阿里巴巴和亚马逊的创始人马云和杰夫·贝佐斯，用它来积累一 46 33113 46 15231 0 0 1745 0 0:00:18 0:00:08 0:00:10 2903种新的跨行业集团。问题是，它的产生将会促进竞争还是抑制需求？

In the past two decades Alibaba and Amazon have added ever more services, from cloud computing to video. The firms’ businesses will reinforce each other as consumers and companies become more likely to use their platforms, and diverse sources of revenue and data power further growth. As a result, the two giants sit at the centre of all sorts of activity. In America Amazon is showing, week by week, the havoc that an innovative e-commerce firm can wreak in a giant, mature market. In China Alibaba is showing how dramatically one company can reshape business in a fast-growing economy. They will not conquer every industry they touch but, as they expand, few firms will change as many sectors in as many places.

在过去的二十年里，阿里巴巴和亚马逊增加了云计算和云视频等服务。随着消费者和企业更倾向于使用这两家公司的平台，它们的业务将相互加强，同时使得多样化的收入来源和数据能力推动进一步的增长。因此，这两大巨头占据了各种活动的中心。例如，在美国，亚马逊每一周都在展示一个创新型的电子商务公司能在一个庞大的成熟市场里可能造成的巨大破坏。在中国，阿里巴巴呈现的是一家企业如何在快速增长经济体中改变业务模式。他们不会去占领它们接触到的每一个行业，而是随着他们的扩展，很少有企业能在尽可能多的地方改变尽可能多的行业。

Through one lens, this is a boon for competition. The e-commerce sites of Amazon and Alibaba lower barriers to entry by providing a simpler, cheaper way for small manufacturers to distribute goods and find potential buyers. Local manufacturers are challenging multinational giants. Consumers benefit, as they can choose from more and better products than ever.

这个现象体现的是竞争的一个好处。亚马逊和阿里巴巴的电子商务网站降低了进入门槛，为小型制造商提供了一种更简单、更实惠的方式销售商品和寻找潜在买家。当本土制造商正在挑战跨国巨头时，受益的是消费者，因为他们可以选择比以往更多更好的产品。

Yet as the giant e-commerce platforms grow, so does unease about their might. With access to cheap, patient capital, Amazon can make big investments, including in warehouses, artificial intelligence and other firms such as Whole Foods, a grocer it bought for $13.7bn this year. Those investments, combined with the vast amounts of data on the consumers and businesses on its platform, mean that competitors struggle to keep up.

然而，随着大型电子商务平台不断发展，对它们的实力的担忧也随之增长。由于能获得成本低且有足够耐心的资本，亚马逊可以制定一系列大规模投资，包括仓库、人工智能以及如在本年度收益为137亿美元的全食超市等企业。这些投资加上其平台上消费者和企业的庞大数据，这让其他竞争对手难以跟上。

Amazon’s challengers should learn from China, where Alibaba’s rivals are teaming up. Tencent began as a gaming and messaging company. It now has a thriving digital-payments business and is the biggest shareholder in JD.com, Alibaba’s closest e-commerce competitor. JD is working with other retailers and tech firms, too. In August it announced that shoppers could buy through Baidu, China’s leading search engine.

亚马逊的挑战者应该向中国学习——阿里巴巴的竞争者腾讯和东京正在联手。腾讯是以游戏和聊天程序起家，如今拥有有蓬勃发展的数字支付业务，也是亚马逊最直接的电商竞争对手京东商城的最大股东。京东也与一些零售商和高科技公司合作。今年八月，京东宣布，消费者可以通过中国领先的搜索引擎百度来购买东西。

Amazon’s would-be competitors might follow a similar path, by forging partnerships. Walmart (another investor in JD), for example, seems to be adopting JD’s tactics, making its products available through Google’s voice assistant to counter Amazon’s Alexa. Facebook wants to make it easier for customers to buy goods featured in its ads. And Google, to the horror of some privacy advocates, is tracking consumers to help bricks-and-mortar shops see which online ads work. American firms may yet catch up with their Chinese counterparts.

亚马逊的潜在竞争者通过建立合作伙伴关系走上了相同的发展道路。例如，沃尔玛（京东的另一个投资者）似乎采用了京东的策略，使其产品可以通过谷歌语音助手来对抗亚马逊的Alexa。Facebook希望能让消费者更为容易地购买广告里的商品。谷歌跟踪消费者的行为，让实体店了解哪种网上广告有效，这让一些隐私倡导者感到惊恐。至此，美国企业可能还能赶上了中国的同行。

Will that be enough to guarantee competition? Regulators must be vigilant. More mergers are now likely among both makers of consumer goods and retailers, as they seek the heft to battle Amazon. Deals between retailers and tech firms will complicate matters further.

这足以保证竞争吗？监管机构必须保持警惕。在寻求去对抗亚马逊的力量的过程中，消费品制造商和零售商之间有了更多的合并。零售商和科技公司之间的交易将使问题进一步复杂化。

Watch the giants

注意这些电商巨头。

In antitrust cases America’s courts have tended to assume that new entrepreneurs would challenge profitable incumbents. But in America venture-capital funding for e-commerce firms is dropping, in part because investors think Amazon will be dominant. This newspaper has argued that regulators should weigh the effect of mergers on the control of data as well as market share—especially for Amazon, given its existing power and range. Antitrust rules, as with so much else in the Amazon era, look as if they will need updating.

在反垄断案件中，美国法院更倾向于认为新创业者将会挑战盈利企业。但是，在美国，针对电商企业的风投资本正在减少，一部分原因是投资者认为亚马逊将占据主导地位。《经济学人》认为监管机构不仅要权衡兼并对数据控制的影响，还要考虑市场占有率的影响——特别是亚马逊的市场份额，尤其是考虑到它目前的实力和经营范围。反垄断规则，像亚马逊的时代的其他事物一样，似乎需要更新。

编译：黎金梅

审校：兰韦如

编辑：翻吧君

来源：经济学人