E-commerce seems to be the most popular business in China, to the point that even petro-giant Sinopec silently started its own e-commerce division in 2012, which aroused a lot of doubts and critics.

Sinopec had a low-profile launch of its B2C (business-to-consumer) online platform, ejoy365.com, on Jan. 1, 2012 and silently opened special online stores in ten cities.

It seems that ejoy365.com has nothing different from other B2C companies selling food, daily life supplies and digital products such as the iPhone 5.

Though this e-commerce platform has developed on a certain scale, there is no clear plan for its future. "Online business is a trend strategically thanks to the development of Internet technology," said one insider. "However, for Sinopec, a company focusing on petro products, there are divergent opinions of how to develop the e-commerce business in the senior management team."

At present, Chinese e-commerce companies are generally trapped in losses and the only company appearing to realize a certain amount of profitability is taobao.com, according to report of ennweekly.com.

"Theoretically, Sinopec doesn't have much chance to achieve great success though it has plenty of money as Sinopec has no core competitiveness – special services or low prices - in e-commerce business," said Xi Wen, former general manager of Yahoo! China.

There is no special discount on ejoy365.com and the only specialty is providing a gas card recharge service, but without any price privilege.

"Sinopec stepped into e-commerce mainly for the development of non-oil business. It is trying diversification to promote its retail business with the integration of online and offline business," said the insider mentioned above.

Non-oil business refers to products or services outside of fuel oil and gas. In fact, Sinopec began its non-oil business in 2003, but it didn't really take off until 2008 when "ejoy" was created as a convenience store brand.

Public data shows that the non-oil business of Sinopec increased from 1.1 billion yuan in 2008 to 8.26 billion yuan in 2011 and is expected to reach 10 billion yuan in 2012 – breaking into ranks of the top 10 Chinese retail chain stores. Moreover, 190,000 convenience stores have been opened in Sinopec's gas stations as of the end of 2011.

It was reported that the operating revenue of non-oil business for Sinopec was targeting 50 billion yuan in 2015, fourfold in four years.

With large numbers of offline chain convenient stores, it's reasonable to expect e-commerce business to become another important support for Sinopec's non-oil business.

"Sinopec still needs accurateorientation in the e-commerce business," added Xie. "At least, there has not been possibility for Sinopec to run large scale e-commerce business."