Alibaba Group, China's largest e-commerce company, said Saturday it will invest US$3 million to help US college students in e-commerce job creation.

The "Schwarzenegger Emerging Entrepreneur Initiative," named after California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, will select 3,000 students from 15 colleges in California, the United States, by the end of 2011, said Alibaba's Chief Executive Officer David Wei.

Each selected student will receive US$1,000 from Alibaba, to pay the cost of operating online shops and logistic service, Wei said at the 7th Netrepreneur Summit in Hangzhou, capital of eastern Zhejiang province.

"With the project we wish to help those young students to launch their entrepreneur career," said Wei.

Hangzhou-based Alibaba has helped create 20,000 job opportunities in California after its acquisition of two US IT companies this year, Schwarzenegger said at meeting organized by Alibaba.

Schwarzenegger visited Hangzhou during his six-day trip to China, Japan and the Republic of Korea, to promote trade for his state.

The job creation plan was seen as the latest move of the Chinese company to enhance the presence of its newly-launched AliExpress service in the United States, as the aided start-ups are encouraged to open online shops through the platform.

At the end of April, Alibaba launched AliExpress, an online platform that allows buyers to directly purchase goods from exporters in small quantities. AliExpress will accept users of eBay Inc's PayPal service on the platform.

Also this year, Alibaba acquired Auctiva, a company that develops eBay auction management software, and Vendio, which also provides services for eBay.

Alibaba said Auctiva's platform will be integrated with Alibaba's online marketplace. Since AliExpress will allow users to list product on eBay as well, the merger will bring more than 250,000 new customers to the Alibaba.com.

(Xinhua News Agency September 13, 2010)