A poster for brand shopping websites in Zhengzhou, Henan province. China is expected to double its e-commerce transaction volume to 18 trillion yuan ($2.86 trillion) by the end of 2015. (Photo: China Daily)
China aims to double the value of its e-commerce sales to 18 trillion yuan ($2.86 trillion) by the end of 2015, which would make it the leading market for global e-commerce.
That's according to an E-commerce 12th Five-Year Plan (2011-15) that was released on Tuesday by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the nation's top industry regulator.
China, with 513 million Internet users, is home to more residents who are online than the United States, according to a China Internet Network Information Center report in January.
"During the 11th Five-Year Plan (2005-10), the growth rate for China's e-commerce sales increased by an average of 250 percent, reaching 4.5 trillion yuan by the end of 2010," the ministry said.
In 2010, about 161 million Internet users purchased 513.1 billion yuan in goods online, an amount making up 3.3 percent of the value of all retail sales in China.
"E-commerce has expanded into various industries such as the agriculture, trading, transportation, finance and travel industries and is merging with China's substantial economy," the plan said.
As online shopping becomes more popular, so do methods of making payments through third-parties online. From 2005 to 2010, the amount of payments made through third-party services increased 60-fold to hit 1.01 trillion yuan.
"Business-to-customer e-commerce will become the main driver of China's online shopping industry," said Ding Jiaqi, an analyst with the domestic information technology research company iResearch Inc.
Websites that allow businesses to sell directly to customers, such as Taobao.com, Amazon.com.cn and 360buy.com, held about 23.2 percent of the e-commerce market last year, having about 179 billion yuan in sales, Ding said.
The company said China may surpass Japan and the US in three years to become the country with the world's largest market for online goods and services.
The research company said 26.5 percent of online retail sales in 2011 were sales of garments and luggage and 24.2 percent were of electronic devices.
The development of mobile Internet devices has also boosted e-commerce. The number of people who had devices that could connect to third-generation, or 3G, networks in China hit 47 million by the end of 2010, and many websites have developed Internet applications for use in online shopping.
