Amazon's (AMZN) surprise bid for Whole Foods (WFM) has rattled the world of retailing, but the U.S. e-commerce giant is well behind Chinese players like Alibaba in moving into bricks-and-mortar retailing.
As Amazon.com Inc (AMZN.O) looks to swallow U.S. grocery chain Whole Foods, China's tech giants are already digesting hefty bricks-and-mortar deals, taking the lead in the battle to transform supermarket shopping with big data and better supply chains.
China's Alibaba Group Holding (BABA.N) and JD.com Inc (JD.O) have invested heavily in offline retail - bricks-and-mortar stores - in recent years to complement their online offerings.
With their ready-made payment and social media platforms to lure shoppers, Alibaba and JD.com have helped China become the world's largest online grocery market, far ahead of the United States.
The price of ethereum crashed as low as 10 cents from around $319 in about a second on the GDAX cryptocurrency exchange on Wednesday, which is being blamed on a "multimillion dollar market sell" order.
Ethereum is an alternative digital currency to bitcoin and had been trading as high as $352 on Wednesday.
Over the past two years, Xi has installed eight former executives from state-owned enterprises in top provincial leadership posts across China. That's double the four ex-corporate managers who were serving among the country's 62 regional Communist Party secretaries and governors ahead of the last big leadership reshuffle in 2012.
Those promoted included Guangdong Governor Ma Xingrui, a former executive at the main contractor for China's space program, and Chongqing Mayor Zhang Guoqing, who rose up through the country's biggest maker of guns and tanks. Hunan Governor Xu Dazhe previously helped run a manufacturer of spacecraft and missile systems.
The prestigious appointments -- overseeing economies larger than small countries -- position them to advance in China's upcoming party congress, in which as many as 11 of the 25 members of the ruling Politburo could be replaced. While it's unclear how Xi's preference for SOE executives may influence policy, it illustrates one way he is putting his imprint on the party by disrupting the promotion system preferred by his immediate predecessors.
Amazon's (AMZN) surprise bid for Whole Foods (WFM) has rattled the world of retailing, but the U.