BEIJING— Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. has a new competitor in the race to connect foreign brands and retailers to the burgeoning ranks of Chinese online consumers.

China’s JD.com Inc. on Wednesday launched a platform to rival Alibaba’s site in enabling foreign companies to sell to Chinese consumers without having to set up shop in the country.

Chinese e-commerce firms are trying to capitalize on the country’s hundreds of millions of online consumers who are increasingly buying products from overseas. Shopping for foreign goods online is seen as a key growth driver for Alibaba and JD.com, thanks to the rise of the Chinese middle class and government policies aimed at promoting domestic consumption through e-commerce.

JD.com’s new venture, called JD Worldwide, competes head on with Alibaba’s Tmall Global site. Products on JD Worldwide include everything from Nine West handbags to Gucci sunglasses and Chanel perfumes. It currently hosts 450 online shops from Australia, France, Germany, Japan and elsewhere, with more than 150,000 individual products from more than 1,200 brands, the Beijing-based company said.

But JD.com has some catching up to do. Alibaba’s Tmall Global site, which launched in February of last year, now has more than 5,400 foreign brands selling their products on it, according to an Alibaba spokeswoman. Other smaller players such as Ymatou.com and Metao.com have had similar sites running for several months or longer and some have announced plans to set up warehouses overseas.