This Day, That Year: Sept 11

Editor's note: This year marks the 70th anniversary of the founding of New China.

On Sept 11, 2001, Beijing Jiaotong University introduced an e-commerce course, becoming one of the first 13 colleges to set up such a major. The Ministry of Education said the new major aimed to meet the surging demand for talent in the booming e-commerce market.

E-commerce is now a major driver of China's retail economy, accounting for almost one-fifth of the country's total retail sales last year, according to the National Bureau of Statistics.

The number of internet users has surged to 830 million last year from 620,000 in 1997.

Of them, 610 million shopped online.

China is also home to Alibaba, one of the world's leading e-trade businesses, which is bigger than eBay and Amazon combined in terms of sales.

Meanwhile, the country's cross-border e-commerce sector has been growing exponentially over the past few years, as demand from the country's middle-income shoppers is becoming increasingly diversified and personalized.

China's cross-border e-commerce has also grown remarkably. Last year, the total volume of retail import and export commodities through the customs cross-border e-commerce management platform surged by 50 percent year-on-year to 134 billion yuan ($19 billion), with exports up 67 percent to 56 billion yuan.

Many e-commerce giants have been seeking to bolster efforts to cater to local demand for quality products from abroad.

This month, Alibaba announced that it has acquired NetEase Kaola, the cross-border e-commerce platform of NetEase, for $2 billion.

In 2017, Shanghai Zhenhua Foreign Trade Professional School and Shanghai Sipo Polytechnic launched a pilot major in cross-border e-commerce. The major is designed to help students develop skills required by the cross-border e-commerce industry.

In June, cross-border e-commerce was officially listed as one of the 46 new majors at secondary schools.