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Fifteen years ago, as Amazon and EBay dominated the tech headlines, few would have predicted that China's e-commerce industry would surpass its western counterparts. At the time, the Internet barely reached 1% of China's population and the barriers to e-commerce seemed almost insurmountable. But 2013 marked a watershed moment for e-commerce in China, with more products sold online on China's "Singles Day" than the US online sales on Cyber Monday and Black Friday combined. How did China's entrepreneurs use social commerce to overcome the barriers to e-commerce's development? And what can the west learn from e-commerce innovations taking place on the ground in China?