Workers sort out packages in a dispatching center of China Postal in Xiangyang, Central China's Hubei province. 

China's online retail sales exceeded nine trillion yuan in 2018, spokesperson Gao Feng said during the Chinese Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM) regular press conference on Thursday. 

The scale of China's online retail market continued to expand in 2018. The online retail sales of tangible goods reached seven trillion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 25.4 percent. It makes up 45.2 percent to the total retail sales of consumer goods, an increase of 7.3 percent from last year, Gao said.

The quality of online retailing in China continued to rise in 2018, which drove the consumption upgrade. The Business to Consumer (B2C) model has seen its market share reach 62.8 percent, up by 4.4 percentage points from the previous year. Smart products such as smart watches, smart speakers, and translators are favored by consumers, with sells increase of more than 80 percent year-on-year. Sells of cosmetics and furniture also achieved rapid growth, with growth rates of 36.2 percent and 30.1 percent respectively, according to MOFCOM.

E-commerce in the rural area developed rapidly in 2018. Online retail sales in the rural area reached 1.37 trillion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 30.4 percent. Online retail sale of the agricultural product reached 230.5 billion yuan, an increase of 33.8 percent from last year.

MOFCOM also added in the press conference that China's foreign investment is stable and healthy. Irrational investment abroad has been effectively curbed. Chinese enterprises completed a total of 30 cross-border M&A projects in January, with actual transactions totaling 1.372 billion U.S. dollars. 

(Source: china.org.cn)