国际英语新闻:Alibaba opens Australian, New Zealand headquarters in Melbourne

CANBERRA, Feb. 4 (Xinhua) -- Alibaba Group Holding Limited on Saturday opened its Australian and New Zealand (ANZ) headquarters in Australia's Melbourne.

"With a local office and expert team, Alibaba Group will help Australian and New Zealand businesses share their world-famous products with billions of customers around the world," Jack Ma, Alibaba Group Founder and Executive Chairman told a ceremony attended by over 350 business, industry and government figures, "Alibaba Group is here to make it easy to do business anywhere."

There are over 1,300 Australian and 400 New Zealand brands on Tmall and Tmall Global, many of which entered China for the first time through these platforms, according to Ma.

The success of Australian products was illustrated through the 2016 Double 11 Global Shopping Festival, with Australia ranked the fourth highest selling country.

"A physical Alibaba headquarters is a key step in ensuring Australian businesses have the support and information they need to succeed in China and the rest of the world," said Maggie Zhou, Australian and New Zealand Managing Director, who will lead the headquarters.

Longer term, Alibaba Group's vision for the ANZ region is to build the entire operating infrastructure needed to enable local businesses to expand globally, Zhou said.

Alibaba Cloud launched its services and opened its data center in late 2016 and there are now more than 1,000 bricks-and-mortar stores accepting Alipay across Australia and New Zealand.

"This is just the start, with further growth planned in the areas of cloud, payments, digital entertainment and logistics," Zhou added.