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Global No. 1 E-Commerce Market for 11th Straight Year Adds 11% in Sales

China remained the world's biggest e-commerce market for the 11th straight year last year with double-digit growth.

Online retail sales rose by 11 percent to CNY15.42 trillion (USD2.16 trillion) last year from a year ago, the commerce ministry announced on its website today.

People are becoming more keen to skip visits to stores as a record high of nearly 28 percent of all retail sales was made up of online sales of physical goods. On e-commerce platforms, consumers are increasingly interested in tourism, culture, entertainment, and catering as these fields accounted for 23.5 percent of sales, contributing 2.6 percentage points to growth.

Online sales of tourism products more than tripled year-over-year, the ministry said. People bought more than twice as many culture and entertainment products online as before and especially concert tickets saw a more than 40-fold boost. Online sales of food and beverages rose by 29 percent while making up a larger share of 22.2 percent of all consumption of catering services.

There is more room for international partnerships in e-commerce, the ministry said. The number of China's Silk Road e-commerce partners increased to 30, while major domestic platforms sold CNY290.3 billion (USD40.8 billion) of imported goods. Silk Road e-commerce refers to China's initiative to trade more with countries along the ancient Silk Road.