After seeing a long stretch of growth spurts, Chinese entrepreneur Jack Ma's e-commerce business growth appears to be suffering from growing pains.

Taobao Mall, known as Tmall, sat for nine years without profits, and now has grown into China's most valuable B2C platform in transaction volume. On October 10, Tmall, said it would increase annual membership fees for Tmall vendors from the current 6,000 yuan each to between 30,000 and 60,000 yuan.