It’s getting hard to define e-commerce these days, especially in burgeoning markets like China. From a purely general perspective, China has been engaged in e-commerce for quite some time now – over 10 years – and the Internet has opened a vast array of doors to anyone who has the fortitude to make their move. However, recent attention has turned towards college-level Chinese students who are exhibiting a knack for innovation, at prices that are hard to ignore. At the same time, security scares and risks are holding some of that innovation back. All of this ties neatly into what the future of China’s e-commerce boom is predicted to look like for the next 5 years.

While many investors are eagerly pitching the new China business model of overnight success stories in China’s IT universe, there is a growing concern amongst developers that short-sighted money makers won’t ultimately produce results when it comes time for the big payoff. Citing names like “Zuckerberg-Gates-Google” has quickly earned a catch phrase status of the investment community in China, and with jobless grads on the prowl for work, it’s a model that won’t be going away any time soon.

From apps development for mobiles, tablets, and iPhones, to just about anything else that can be wired, the Technology,Media, Telecom Industry (TMT, as it’s commonly referred to in China) has resulted in a furor over tech development that’s almost impossible to keep track of, as American investors are striving to apply the tried and true metric to this new market, as they had previously: Generation X is the new Generation Y in China, and those who move on it first will be counting caches of money before too long.

Reuters perhaps put it best, when the news released pointed at IPO fund raising failures for China’s “RenRen” Facebook knockoff, and the news agency deemed China’s tech landscape as exhibiting signs of “Chinese IPO fatigue.”

Of course, the news is always sunny in Beijing; where a recent gathering of players in the IT development community, along with a strong showing of top-tier representatives from China’s technology entrepreneur pool, were busily feeding venture capitalists fresh ideas about the fact that in China, “you ain’t seen nothin’ yet.”

Valuations run high for companies that make little to zero money for the time being, and that optimism is fueled by outlooks on the Chinese government’s new 5-year plan, which will effectively take things in a continued direction of sustainability as we reach 2012. Tech is a big initiative for the politicos who want to promote stability and employment, so the bets are on that China will continue its ascent, for fear of turning matters into something far more serious and grave.

China’s mobile Internet business – Highly promising, but an underdeveloped payment system is still keeping online retailers from making real money, according to experts in China.

Chinese are still a bit reluctant to pay through mobile Internet channels, because of rampant scams and security concerns. The best and most secure sites are making it hard to finalize a buy, due to complex security-heavy checkout procedures.

“More than 1.9 million e-commerce operators in China have faced the same problem,” according to Yu Yongfu, chief executive officer of UCWeb, the world’s biggest mobile device browser provider by subscribers.

The number of Chinese mobile Internet users climbed to 303 million in 2010, and the number of mobile payment users is expected to reach 221 million this year,.

Finally, corruption still reigns supreme as one of the biggest hindrances to China’s development in this area. China’s political Party mouthpiece China Daily cites Alibaba founder Jack Ma, in an interview: “Someone has criticized me that Taobao made its first pot of gold by offering freebies and selling counterfeit products. I responded that first of all, I had not yet made a fortune to make myself a rich man; second, this was not my first pot of gold. Taobao has reached such a big scale that it would not necessarily rely on selling counterfeit products if it really wanted to make some fast money. I want to tell everyone that no matter online or offline, the good guys outnumber bad guys and good commodities outnumber bad commodities.”