China remains the world's largest ecommerce trading market, where transactions through unconventional e-platforms reached 26.1 trillion yuan last year, up 19.8 percent from the previous year, according to a Sina news report citing data from the Ministry of Commerce.

The value of China's ecommerce market accounted for 39.2 percent of the global market as of the end of 2016, making it the largest globally for consecutive years, according to the report.

The ecommerce-related services market also reached 2.45 trillion yuan in 2016, up 23.7 percent from the previous year.

The report indicated that the scale of online shopping users, value of ecommerce transactions, and the number of employees served in ecommerce sectors all reported steady growth in China last year.

In China last year, the number of internet users reached 731 million, accounting for 53.2 percent of the country's entire population. Online shopping consumers reached 467 million, or 63.8 percent of internet users, which also increased 12.9 percent over the end of 2015.

The number of users who used mobile phones to place orders reached 441 million as of the end of 2016, taking up 63.4 percent overall mobile internet users and registering an annual growth rate of 29.8 percent, the report added.

The explosive growth of China's ecommerce sector over the past few years was a result of fast expansion of Alibaba's Taobao and Tmall marketplaces, as well as JD.com, which is backed by another Chinese technology giant Tencent.

According to the report, the most traded goods among Chinese e-platforms are clothing, home furnishings, electronic appliances, mobile phones, digital goods, food and drink, and baby products.

(Source:zdnet.com)