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Made in China
Winter Nie and Katherine Xin
(http://www.wiley.com/)

Action in the auction arena

Taobao means `hunt for treasure,' in Chinese. A company by that name, Taobao.com, was conceived in April 2003, when seven people, with an average age of 25, came together at a secret meeting in the private lakeside villa of Jack Ma, chairman and CEO of Alibaba, in Hangzhou. "In the first one or two months of operations, the seven founders worked more than 10 hours every day carefully studying eBay EachNet's site, debating its strengths and weaknesses, totally isolated from the outside world with no access to phones or e-mail," narrate Winter Nie and Katherine Xin in Made in China: Secrets of China's dynamic entrepreneurs.

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