It will face competition not only from Chinese retail rivals, but also from online portals and American firms like Best Buy and Wal-Mart.

Walmart is drawing up plans to launch e-commerce operations in China and Japan, as part of a focus on driving sales by expanding its online presence into new global markets, Financial Times reported.

China's largest retail website, Taobao, and Yahoo! Japan launched a joint platform Tuesday that allows consumers to buy products both from China and Japan.