online business to retail products to foreign countries from China

Stupid answer, but in line with the question: whatever people will buy.

Not so stupid: Stay away from things possibly legally tricky. Not talking of counterfeit stuff here (but that too), but in general:

• No medicines. Seriously. THis is tricky stuff within for example the EU, importing from a REALLY foreign country would make me cry (from the legal complications).

• No foodstuff. Especially nothing fresh. This normally has to go through a lot of controls, and retail customers will not appreciate this.

• Carefull with all sorts of nature products - certain things may be limited / Forbidden in other countries (Wood types, animal parts etc.). If you want to avoid trouble (for you or more your customer) just stay away from them.

From there on things are a lot easier.

But the main questions are not so much "what kind of product" but "how do you get customers".

Your primary problem will be finding a method to accept payment from other countries. You must be able to accept credit cards- at least Visa, Master Card, and American Express. Can you do that? If not, how will people pay for their purchases?

You also need to be able to ship your products to those countries. How do you plan to deal with each countries restrictions of what products are legal to import? For example, the US has many restrictions on the type of products that can be shipped, but only one of them seems to be currently enforced. (You can not ship high power laser pointers to the US.)

If you are serious about doing this you should check out your competition. Deal Extreme is already a well known Chinese supplier of virtually every product you can imagine. You need to check out how they operate before you build your system. Note they offer free shipping on every product they sell and they accept credit cards for payment.