
Photo: VCG
China’s online retail sales in the first nine months of the year rose 16.8% year-on-year to 7.3 trillion yuan ($1.03 trillion), according to data published Friday by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS).
Though that growth was lower than the 27.7% recorded for the same period last year, online sales — excluding services — as a percentage of total retail sales rose 2 percentage points to 19.5%.
Total retail sales for the nine-month period rose 8.2% to 29.7 trillion yuan. Nearly half of the total retail growth came from online sales, according to NBS.
Online retail has also boosted logistics services, with China handling a total of 44 billion packages in the first nine months of the year, an increase of 26.7% over the same period in 2018, according to the State Post Bureau.
Contact reporter Mo Yelin (yelinmo@caixin.com)