Chinese developer Greenland deepens go-global drive to diversify into e-commerce

For Shanghai-based Greenland Group, one of the mainland’s three largest property developers, the global future is in the burgeoning market for e-commerce, as it looks to add a new dimension to the government’s call for companies beyond borders.

Chairman Zhang Yuliang sees a grand online trading platform that connects its procurement hubs abroad with its logistics centres on the mainland.

“Greenland envisions becoming a frontrunner in cross-border e-commerce, rather than a follower,” Zhang said. “The segment is a prospective commercial territory that Greenland wants to move in.”

Outside the mainland, it has set up four procurement centres in the United States, South Korea, Australia and Britain, and has signed preliminary agreements with partners from France, Hungary, Canada and Japan to bolster cross-border trading.

Greenland, owned by an arm of the Shanghai city government, is aggressively investing in global markets as it looks to diversify after focusing almost all of its investment on the mainland for the past two decades.