China's online retail sales up 10 pct in 2020

China, the world's largest online retail market for an eighth consecutive year, saw its annual online retail sales total 11.76 trillion yuan (about 1.82 trillion U.S. dollars) in 2020, up 10.9 percent year on year.

The figures were unveiled on Wednesday in a statistical report on China's internet development, issued by the China Internet Network Information Center.

Online sales of physical commodities reached 9.76 trillion yuan in 2020, accounting for nearly a quarter of all retail sales of consumer goods, according to the report.

By December 2020, China was home to 782 million online consumers, that number up by more than 72 million compared with March 2020 and accounting for nearly 80 percent of the country's internet-using population.

Purchasing goods via e-commerce livestreaming platforms is popular in China, the report found.