E-commerce flourishes in Nanyang

Nanyang signed agreements with some of China's top online retailers on Oct 18 to ensure e-commerce in the city continues to flourish.

Contracted enterprises include e-commerce giant Alibaba, e-commerce platform Beijing Creative Work, online foreign trading platform DHgate.com, and online ticketing platform Ctrip. They not only signed agreements with Nanyang municipal people's government, but will also be cooperating with Wolong district and Zhenping county.

More than 30 projects were settled in Nanyang covering fields as diverse as industry, agriculture and tourism. Special promotional projects will be carried out from the sale of agricultural products, including kiwi in Xixia, pomegranate in Xichuan and Zhenping, and traditional Chinese medicine products in Nanyang.

Nanyang has developed 350,000 e-commerce businesses with more than 500,000 direct employees and more than 6,000 online products since it started in 2014. E-commerce public services and logistics express services are widespread across the city, county, township and villages. In 2017, Nanyang's volume of e-commerce transactions reached 66.5 billion yuan ($9.6 billion).

Zhang Ruidong, a director of Alibaba Group's Central Government Affairs Department, said the signed-up enterprises are very optimistic about the development prospects of Nanyang. They will form a special operation model for the city and strive to reach an annual turnover of 300 billion yuan by 2022.