Amazon is inching further into the Chinese market. It posted a hiring notice recently looking for someone to head a lending program for small businesses here in China. --But, we're talking about the largest e-commerce market in the world, so what might give Amazon an edge to further expand its presence in China? Mi Jiayi explores what the US company's move might mean for China's e-commerce sector.

Amazon's small business loan project, called Amazon Lending, grants loans to sellers on the Amazon marketplace. An analyst here, however, says many e-commerce companies have long been providing loans as a way to attract small sellers to their platforms. Small business owners often find it difficult to get business loans from traditional financial institutions, for lack of guarantees or collateral. Loaning money to the small sellers actually makes money for the e-commerce companies.

CALVIN ZENG, AUDIT PARTNER DELOITTE CHINA "First they have big data, business data on the platform, which allows them to fully understand SMEs' business transactions and business trends in the future. It's reported that if they can provide financial services to SMEs then they probably could easily increase their profits by over 30%."

Last year, Amazon said that it has granted three billion US dollars worth of small-business loans to merchants in countries including the United States, Japan and the UK, and more than 50 percent of the companies have taken out second loans. But whether such a lending project would work for Amazon in China remains to be seen, as one analyst says the crucial condition is that the e-commerce platform needs to have enough transactions to support the business.

PROF. CUI LILI, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR INST. OF E-COMMERCE, SUFE "For e-commerce platforms, you need to have enough customers to bring in more customers. With more customers, you create more demand, thus room for more sellers. So Amazon's move to give loans will be a good thing for the sellers. But we should keep in mind that the issuance of these loans are based on transaction records. So if there aren't enough customers, you wind up with limited transaction records, and it's not a sustainable loop."

Last year, the total transactions in China reached 1.1 trillion US dollars, almost double US online consumption. But even as a global retailer, Amazon still does not have much of a piece of this market. Estimates by iResearch show Amazon has less than two percent of China's market share, and that's after more than 10 years of operation in the country.