China's online retail trade expands in 2014

SHANGHAI - China's online retail trade volume grew 49.7 percent year on year to 2.8 trillion yuan ($450 billion) in 2014.

The online trade took up 10.6 percent of total retail volume in 2014, a 32.5 percent expansion, according to a report by the China E-Commerce Research Center (CECRC) on Thursday.

The report was compiled on trade figures of China's e-commerce giants such as Tmall.com, JD.com and z.cn. Tmall.com, the online shopping mall of Alibaba, took the lion's share, with its trade reaching 763 billion yuan.

Shen Yunyun, an assistant analyst at CECRC, attributed the online market growth to a many factors, including expansion in rural areas, overseas transactions, and vendors using the popular instant messaging application WeChat.

Notably, transactions carried out via mobile Internet expanded 240 percent to 928 billion yuan amid massive promotions for mobile shopping apps.

"In addition to the permeation of smart phones and tablet computers, the emergence of mobile payment services has effectively boosted China's mobile shopping," said Mo Daiqing, CECRC's senior analyst.