As Sir Keir Starmer shook hands with Xi Jinping in Beijing last month, another meeting was taking place not too far away — one with consequences for British consumers. At a huge urban complex owned by the Chinese retail giant Jingdong — or JD.com — representatives of the $40 billion (£29 billion) company were meeting British trade delegates.

On the sidelines, JD.com’s bosses confirmed the official launch of a new retail arm, called Joybuy, in the UK next month. The online-only brand will sell everything from smartphones, TVs and fridges to loo roll, tinned tomatoes and shrimp crackers.

The British expansion of one of China’s biggest retailers has been the subject of feverish speculation for some time. Founded in 1998, JD.com has grown into an ecommerce colossus with more than 600 million customers in China, a Nasdaq listing in the US and about $160 billion in annual revenues.

Its founder Liu Qiangdong, commonly nicknamed “China’s Jeff Bezos”, believes JD.com can be a global player, and has set about expanding his retail empire into Europe and the UK to offset difficulties in the Chinese market.

However, its British drive will pit JD.com against market leader Amazon, which has dominated UK ecommerce for many years. So what is Liu bringing to the fight?

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“If [Joybuy] is just the same offer as Amazon, then because Amazon’s brand is so well ingrained … it will be literally burning money,” said Clive Black, an analyst at investment group Shore Capital. “But if they’ve got an offer that is different or better, Amazon may have something to worry about.”

Joybuy’s app is already available in Britain and will carry more than 100,000 different lines from March. A 340g can of Spam comes in at £3, listed next to to Zhen Wei Xiang Fermented Black Bean Chicken Feet at £2.99. One click away are laundry appliances, protein shakes and jumper cables; it is a true “everything shop”.

Bosses have agreed a wholesale deal with supermarket Morrisons to sell its own-label products, echoing the agreement that Marks & Spencer has with Ocado. Frozen products are stocked, and it is understood consideration is being given to selling fresh products at some point in the future.

Its impending launch comes after JD.com lavished huge amounts setting up its British business. A sum of £37 million has been spent, for example, on a new 24,000 sq ft head office on Greycoat Place in the heart of Westminster, while in an aggressive hiring spree the company has poached senior talent from a range of British retailers. It has more than 1,100 employees in the UK already.

Matthew Nobbs, a retail veteran who worked for Holland & Barrett and spent 20 years at Lidl, has been enlisted by JD.com as managing director. Figures at Amazon have been approached too, it is understood.

This push looks set to continue: the company is posting job openings for dozens more London-based roles on LinkedIn, spanning everything from government affairs specialists to category managers (who oversee the buying and selling of specific products), software engineers, compliance staff and designers.

JD.com has been eyeing the British market for some time; it considered making an offer for Currys in 2024 but walked away from the process. It was not until it tried — and failed — to buy Argos from Sainsbury’s last year that its plans gained more attention in the UK. Talks were in advanced stages but collapsed when JD.com changed the terms of its offer.

Following its failed swoop for Argos, it is thought JD.com plans to go it alone in Britain — at least for now. “They are, unfortunately for them, now regarded as the unreliable boyfriend in British boardrooms,” said Black.

However, JD.com will gain a significant foothold on the Continent with the $2.5 billion acquisition of a majority stake in the German retailer Ceconomy, which was greenlit by shareholders last year and is now going through regulatory approvals.

While pursuing Currys and Argos, JD.com was busy building a massive distribution network to support its ambitions, acquiring warehouses in Milton Keynes and Luton, which give it quick access to London and Birmingham, as well as a string of depots. Across Europe, it now has more than 30 warehouses. A separate property investment arm of JD.com has also bought units in Leicester and Rugby.

Owning its own logistics is crucial to JD.com’s ability to remain competitive, allowing it to bypass expensive middlemen and give it control over the supply chain. In a rare Chinese-language interview in Beijing last year, Liu boasted of the firm’s ability to manage expenses, claiming that only the best discount retailers — such as Costco, Aldi and, indeed, Amazon — can match its levels globally.

It is making speed and consistency of delivery a priority. For customers living in London, Luton and Milton Keynes, JD.com offers an ultra-fast service called “JoyExpress”, with same-day delivery for orders completed by 11am and next-day delivery by 3pm for orders made before 11pm. Its branded vans can already be spotted traversing the streets of London.

Then there are more “gamified” elements of retailing, such as rapidly changing “lightning deals” where the price of expensive products will be significantly reduced for hours at a time. The company has been tight-lipped on other plans, which it will announce in March with the official launch of Joybuy.

Can it really make a dent in the UK market? Love it or loathe it, Amazon has a vice-like grip on Britain, accounting for more than 20 per cent of online sales of appliances, consumer electronics and entertainment products. Some reports suggest its total share of ecommerce beyond those products is more than 30 per cent.

While frequently criticised for its treatment of warehouse staff and alleged impact on high street retailers, it reigns supreme in online shopping.

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“Even if Joybuy invests heavily in operational excellence and delivery speed, we’re going to see a response from Amazon innovating even further and from a higher baseline,” said Andriana Bantra, senior consultant at data firm Kantar.

Amazon already offers same and next-day delivery, and in some areas it is pushing to go a step further. For instance, it is trialling Amazon Now, a rapid-delivery service promising thousands of food and drink products and household goods within 30 minutes or less, and has started running test flights of drones in earnest.

One factor that could give Joybuy an edge is its access to affordable Chinese products. Liu has signed exclusive deals with 1,000 brands to take them overseas as part of JD.com’s international expansion.

“If we sold the same goods as Amazon, all local European and American brands, JD.com would have absolutely no advantage,” Liu said in an interview last year, adding that he believed the product quality of Chinese brands “has really surpassed that of Europe and America, and their innovation is even stronger”.

He continued: “Thirty years ago, Europeans and Americans would be afraid to buy anything labelled ‘Made in China’. “But think about it: since 2010, the whole world has come to regard ‘Made in China’ as a sign of quality.”

Black at Shore Capital said: “China has a formidable manufacturing sector, a huge assortment of products and a myriad of brands. That is where they’ll see their opportunity.”

Amazon, of course, sells plenty of Chinese-made brands already, but Liu will be hoping he can trump those with JD.com’s suppliers.

JD.com and Amazon declined to comment.

While political relations between Britain and China have been strained for some time, Britons have been more than happy to take a punt on new Chinese products in recent years, especially as high inflation in the West makes many European or American-made goods less affordable.

BYD, the Chinese electric vehicle manufacturer, now outsells Tesla after overtaking Elon Musk’s EV brand last year. Meanwhile, the low-cost fashion retailers Shein and Temu, though heavily criticised for exploiting a tax loophole to avoid customs duty, have won over British Gen-Z shoppers in their droves.

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“UK consumers are clearly more value-conscious today and I think that’s something JD.com is actually betting on with Joybuy — they promise these lower prices and high-quality things,” said Bantra at Kantar.

Bosses at Joybuy are understood to want to avoid any association with Shein and Temu. JD.com already has longstanding relationships with most big European suppliers of food and general merchandise. “Cheap goods severely damage our country’s image,” Liu said last June.

Bantra believes that building this level of trust in Britain will be critical if Joybuy wants to win over shoppers from established retailers.

“What you need to remember, especially in a market like the UK which is very mature, is that value is not just about prices,” she said. Rather, it’s about the cumulative strength of the brand, the speed and consistency of delivery, and the quality of products on offer.

For all its ambition and expenditure, there is a defensive element to JD.com’s expansion into Europe. It faces intense competition from rivals in the Chinese market, with Liu admitting in June that the past half a decade had been a “lost five years” for the company, with “no innovation, no growth, no progress”.

“You have three or four main players in China and, because it’s so competitive, that really puts their cost margins under pressure,” said Claire Williams, head of UK & European industrial research at property firm Knight Frank.

Even if things go as JD.com plans, it may take some time before Joybuy makes a significant impact in the UK. Liu himself has bemoaned the speed at which JD.com’s business model rolls out, calling it “slow, very difficult and very tiring”.

Ultimately, though, he appears to be up for the long game: he has said it could take from ten to 20 years to establish JD.com on the international stage. Let the battle of the delivery vans commence.