In the first half of the year, the city of Quanzhou in East China’s Fujian province, easily topped online retail sales in the province, according to local officials.

In the six months, the city achieved online retail sales of 113.25 billion yuan ($16.21 billion), accounting for 42.4 percent of Fujian province’s total, according to the Quanzhou municipal bureau of commerce.

Increasingly, traditional businesses in Quanzhou are turning to online retail. [Photo/qzwb.com]

During the period, the city's B2C -- or business-to-customer -- online retail sales came in at 80.40 billion yuan, accounting for 71 percent of the total, a year-on-year increase of 32.2 percent.

C2C -- or customer-to-customer -- online retail sales reached 32.85 billion yuan, accounting for 29.0 percent of the city's total, a year-on-year increase of 21.5 percent.

Officials said that in the first half, the top three districts and county-level cities in Quanzhou’s online retail sales were Shishi city, Fengze district and Jinjiang city -- with online retail sales of 37.83 billion yuan, 16.38 billion yuan and 15.69 billion yuan, respectively.

In addition, rural e-commerce has become a new growth point, leading to even more development of e-commerce in Quanzhou.

From January to June this year, Quanzhou’s rural online retail sales saw a year-on-year increase of 29.8 percent, amounting to 84.66 billion yuan.

The top three categories of online retail sales for agricultural products were tea, nourishing food and snack food, with the sales of 2.97 billion yuan, 450 million yuan and 270 million yuan, respectively.

In recent years, Quanzhou has launched a series of measures and policies to promote e-commerce development, in order to help poverty alleviation.

It has arranged special funds to support relevant county-level cities and districts in various areas.

This has supported targeted poverty alleviation work and promoted the development of rural e-commerce talent training, promotions and marketing of special agricultural products, as well as entrepreneurship and employment in poor households.