实体书店与网络书店的激烈竞争

Despite being known to Chinese consumers primarily as a home appliance retailer, Chinese company Suning has started to sell books on its E-commerce platform.

With offers as low as 85 percent off the retail price, their prices are quite attractive to potential online buyers. Manager Li Bin is from Suning.com. He says the company is well aware of the implications of what it's doing.

"There are many readers in China, and books are also quite suitable to be included as one of the major E-commerce products. Given that we are building up an online platform selling all kinds of products, this is something that we've got to do right now."

As the new player in the online bookstore market, Suning has made quite a successful entrance onto the scene by signing contracts with more than 400 publishers in China. The low prices have urged other major online booksellers to cut profits in order to maintain consumers. Dangdang.com and 360buy.com are all promoting their books at surprisingly low prices, igniting a new price war in the market.

There's no doubt that these price wars can benefit consumers, but how much profit can the companies really make from them? Market insider Zhang Yuliang from the Posts and Telecom Press gives his insights.

"New online book sales platforms like Suning are not yet in their profit-making phase, and what it's doing right now is seizing as large a market share as possible. Part of this is by gaining market demand from the closing-down of bookstores on the streets. It's likely that when the newer generations like those born in the 2000s grow up, their shopping habits may mainly consist of online purchases."

The facts have echoed this prediction. From Shanghai's Mr Scholar bookstore to foreign ventured Bertelsmann Chains, and from some Sanlian bookshops to the recent O2Sun bookstores, many non-government subsidized bookstores which once were filled with bustling customer flows are now dying off, one by one. The bookstores on the streets are facing high rental fees and find it hard to further cut profits to lure customers while online book sellers are competing to offer cut-price deals.

Renowned publisher Lu Jinbo says more effort is required from local governments to protect privately owned bookstores.

"The added-value tax is overly high for those bookstores while the government subsidized ones like the Xinhua bookstores have much lower costs. I suggest that the private-owned book stores should be exempt from taxes. It'd be perfect if the government could lower their rental fees but eventually, the market has to have the final say on this part of the issue."

Some online book sellers like Amazon.cn have tried to cope with these trends by making friendly overtures to privately owned bookstores which are struggling to survive on urban Chinese streets. Vice president of the Amazon.cn Kurt Beidler offers an idea which he believes can benefit both parties.

"We can offer our E-commerce platform to those owners of the bookstores, and they can be our sellers online to sell their books using our facilities, like a warehouse. This could be a new way for them to boost their business."

However, both virtual bookstores and the online stores are facing the same critical issues surrounding electronic books. Experts say that E-reading lifestyles are changing people's habits. More readers now are reading on electronic books, mobile phones or gadgets like iPads. This prevailing trend has also affected people's incentives when purchase paper books elsewhere. Who will survive in the end still remains to be seen.

For CRI, I'm Liu Min.