New Milestone

Tmall and Taobao, the B2C and C2C arms of e-commerce giant Alibaba Group, reached 1 trillion yuan ($160 billion) in combined sales by the end of November.

Chinas explosive e-commerce landscape has changed buying habits in the country. Around 30 percent of transactions were made in the apparel sector, with total sales hitting 300 billion yuan ($48.27 billion). According to the National Bureau of Statistics, nearly 36 percent of purchases of shoes, clothes and bags were completed via Tmall or Taobao.

Tmall accounted for 54.6 percent of Chinas B2C business in the third quarter of 2012, and Taobao is leading the C2C market with a share of 94.5 percent.

According to media reports, since 2012, Taobao and Tmall have created some 4.67 million jobs, along with 13 million indirect jobs in areas such as logistics, online payment and e-commerce services.

Visa Waiver

Foreign tourists from 45 countries will be able to enjoy a 72-hour visa-free stay in Beijing from January 1, but visitors without a proper visa will not be allowed to travel outside the capital, the city government announced on November 5.

The policy is aimed at making Beijing more accessible to visitors and is expected to attract more overseas travelers.

In recent years, Beijing Capital Airport has strived to become an international transfer hub. But in 2011, transfer passengers merely accounted for 7 percent of 78.67 million travelers received by the airport, among which international transfer passengers were a paltry 354,000, far less than other major international airports in the world.