U.S. e-cigarettes maker Juul Labs Inc., which faces a widening crackdown on vaping at home, has entered China, with online storefronts on e-commerce sites owned by Alibaba Group and JD.com to tap the world’s largest market of smokers.

Juul, in which tobacco giant Altria Group owns a 35 percent stake, has been launching its products in international markets such as South Korea, Indonesia and the Philippines. It recently raised over US$750 million in an expanded funding round.

The U.S. Government announced plans Wednesday to remove all flavored e-cigarettes from store shelves, as officials warned that sweet flavors had drawn millions of children into nicotine addiction.

The move comes as U.S. health officials are investigating a handful of deaths and potentially hundreds of lung illnesses tied to vaping.

A notice published on Juul’s official virtual store on Tmall, an Alibaba e-commerce site, said it had opened Sept. 9. Juul also had a similar store on JD.com, another major Chinese online retailer.

On Tmall, a Juul device with two flavor pods sells for 299 yuan (about US$40). Flavors include mint, mango and Virginia tobacco.

China, which is the world’s largest single market for tobacco consumption with over 300 million smokers, represents a market with both opportunity and challenges for the company.

It is already home to dozens of Chinese competitors with names such as Relx, Yooz and SNOW+ that have taken tens of millions of dollars in venture capital funding from high-profile investors. Like Juul, the competitors have adopted the concept of producing discrete devices that vaporize potent nicotine salts.

China’s government has perennially launched anti-smoking campaigns in an effort to improve public health. Earlier this year, it released a draft document suggesting that China’s laws regulating e-cigarettes will eventually largely resemble those in Europe.(SD-Agencies)