Online retailing spurs China's rural consumption upgrade: report

BEIJING -- Online retailing is changing the supply structure of goods and services in China's rural areas and accelerating rural consumption upgrade, an industry report said.

As rural infrastructure continues to improve and big e-commerce platforms start targeting rural customers, more high-quality products are available for consumers in rural areas, the Academy of China Council for the Promotion of International Trade said in the report.

Data showed rural residents are nowadays more inclined to buy home appliances and digital products online, said the report.

Rural residents expand the sales channel of agricultural products through online retailing and earn more money, thus leading to robust growth of rural consumption, said the report.

In the January-March period, rural online retail sales reached 439.79 billion yuan ($68 billion), increasing 35.3 percent from a year earlier, according to data released by the Ministry of Commerce.

Online sales of agricultural products amounted to 105.58 billion yuan in the same period, representing a year-on-year growth of 4.9 percent, the ministry said.