Today, a lot of western companies fail within the first years after entering the Chinese market. The online retail market in China is extremely attractive and holds a lot of potential for companies or brands, due to its sheer size. Besides providing an overview about the most important cross-border e-commerce platforms in China, this study aims to understanding the most common failure factors of western companies in China, and based on that, investigate on the relevant information and knowledge to address these failure factors. Finally, the collected information will be represented in a knowledge base, which aims to provide companies planning to internationalize to China valuable initial information. To test the thesis statement, that a dynamically updating documentation of knowledge, rules, and suggestions can be developed, which helps Swiss retail companies to establish a targeted presence in the Chinese e-commerce market, design science research in conjunction with a literature review and expert discussions has been applied. The results indicate that such a knowledge base can be provisioned, also with incorporating a certain degree of dynamic data intake, and the information selected to be represented is generally applicable and valuable for affected stakeholders. The validation of the knowledge base suggests that there still is a gap of information and a certain degree of misperception of the Chinese market and unveils a lot of potential to further deepen the research.