Online shopping booms in Tibet

The number of residents using modern communication tools has rapidly increased in recent years in the Tibet autonomous region, according to the region's communication management office.

The region had more than 2.01 million telephone subscribers in 2010, and that figure increased to 3.24 million by the end of the year, according to the office.

It said the number of Internet users in the region reached 2.25 million by the end of the year, including 2.03 million mobile Internet users.

According to China Mobile Tibet, Tibet has 2.27 million cellphone users, and 4,265 villages are now connected with mobile signal coverage.

As it takes a relatively long time for new products and services to become available in Tibet, e-commerce, and online shopping in particular, has boomed in the region in recent years, playing an increasingly important role in daily life.

A recent 10-year statement by Alipay, a third-party online payment company under the Alibaba Group, shows that Tibet ranked first for mobile payments in the last three years.

Tibet ranked first for mobile payments in China in 2014, accounting for 62.2 percent of the total, online business magazine longau.com reported. It was followed by Shanxi with 59.6 percent, Ningxia with 58.3 percent, and the Inner Mongolia autonomous region with 57.5 percent, the website reported.