Chinese e-commerce firm Alibaba.com announced it was investing another 1 billion yuan (123.46 million US dollars) to its subsidiary Taobao.com to continue offering free C2C services in the next three years, the Economic Daily reported on Friday.

Taobao.com announced simultaneously that it would go on providing a three-year e-commerce service free of charge for those participating in its on-line trading, the newspaper said.

Figures show in the first three quarters this year, the total trade volume through Taobao.com exceeded 5 billion yuan. The service of Taobao.com enjoys the fastest growth rate among all e-commerce websites in the country, according to the newspaper.

Early fee collection over China's individual e-commerce would block the normal development of this industry, Sun Tongyu, general-manager of Taobao.com was quoted as saying.

Leading international e-commerce company ebay.com, a major rival for Taobao.com in the country, said it would not choose to provide free-of-charge on-line services due to its robust development in China, the newspaper said.

Source: Xinhua