Maersk, a unit of Denmark's A.P. Moller-Maersk, began offering the service to Chinese shippers on Alibaba's OneTouch booking website on Dec. 22, a spokeswoman for the shipping line said.

Shippers traditionally go through freight forwarders to book space for goods on container vessels, but lines such as Maersk are allowing cargo owners to book directly via the internet.

For their part, e-commerce companies are increasingly venturing into logistics activities to try to gain better control over their supply chain networks.

Amazon.com has registered a Chinese business as a freight forwarder and has leased aircraft to handle more of its own deliveries in the United States.

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