Why Is EBay Returning to China?

About a decade ago, EBay Inc. made a legendary retreat from the Chinese auction business in the face of growing local competition. It was a defeat so humiliating that it became a business school case study. Since then, however, the Chinese e-commerce market has changed drastically -- and so has EBay. As the company makes its return to the mainland, it may be at the forefront of an important trend in online trade.

EBay recently announced that it's partnering with Ningbo, a major port and manufacturing hub, to help boost the city's e-commerce with the rest of the world. That's a farsighted move. In 2016, Chinese shoppers made a whopping $86 billion in online purchases from vendors in other countries. Globally, such trade was just as healthy, adding up to $300 billion in 2015 and growing at nearly 25 percent a year -- faster than domestic e-commerce. At a time when globalization otherwise seems to be in retreat, companies taking advantage of this kind of trade are looking like the future of retail.