With Thai durians selling like hot cakes on Alibaba's Tmall platform, the regime has every reason to believe its deal to have the e-commerce giant promote Thai products will be a resounding success. But Thai farmers may not necessarily gain as much from this as they expect.
The government warmly received a recent report by the South China Morning Post that around 80,000 Monthong durians, weighing a combined 200,000 kilogrammes, were snapped up by Chinese consumers on Tmall within just 60 seconds of going on sale online.
During Alibaba Group executive chairman Jack Ma's visit to Thailand on April 19, the Commerce Ministry and Alibaba Group jointly launched a campaign to sell Thai rice and durians on Tmall.com, China's largest online business-to-consumer platform, which has access to over 1.4 billion Chinese consumers.
