China’s online retail turnover surged 70% year-on-year to more than 880 billion yuan ($143.06 billion) in the first half of this year, bucking the sluggish growth of the whole retailing industry, according to Yao Jian, spokesman of the Ministry of Commerce (report in Chinese).
Online retailing business maintained sustainable growth in recent years, intertwining with every aspect of people’s daily life, according to Yao. The turnover of e-commerce industry soared 31.7% year-on-year to 8.02 trillion yuan in 2012, of which the sales of online retailing unit advanced 67.5% year-on-year to 1.3 trillion yuan, accounting for 6.3% of the total retail sales of consumer goods. The turnover of e-commerce is expected to reach 18 trillion yuan by 2015, according to the 12th Five-year Plan (report in Chinese).
The newly added online consumers totaled 28.89 million in H1 2013, sending the number of total online consumers to 271 million, according to stats from the China Internet Network Information Center.
Furthermore, enterprises pay more attentions to online business with the popularity of e-commerce. Around 32% of enterprises launched online procurement or marketing as of the end of 2012.
Online retailing covers almost all categories of goods and the most popular products are garments, groceries and electronic appliances. B2C model is taking the lead in e-commerce sector, representing 29.7% of the total e-commerce turnover in 2012, up 4.4% from a year earlier.
The trial program for cross-border e-commerce transactions, which will be launched in October, will accelerate the development of China’s e-commerce industry. At present, more than 200,000 domestic companies are engaged in cross-border e-commerce transactions, chalking up more than 2 trillion yuan of turnover in 2012.
Li Jinqi, minister of the Department Electronic Commerce and Informatization under the MOC, added that they will step up the compilation of relevant policies to standardize the regulation of online retailing market.