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from the first e-commerce transaction in china 26 years ago to the current national e-commerce transaction volume of about 50 trillion yuan, china's e-commerce has gone through a journey from scratch to prosperity. today, e-commerce has penetrated into all aspects of production and life, leading the trend of the times in many fields.

on april 7, 1998, the first e-commerce transaction in china took place between beijing haixing kaizhuo computer company and shaanxi huaxing import and export company. they used the e-commerce system of the china commodity exchange center running on the internet to conduct the first electronic transaction, with a transaction amount of 1.66 million yuan. a week later, a container truck loaded with compaq computers arrived in beijing from xi'an, marking the successful completion of the transaction.

this transaction opened the door to the development of e-commerce. three months later, in july 1998, the china commodity exchange market was officially established. in october 1998, the state economic and trade commission and the ministry of information industry jointly announced the launch of the "golden trade project" with electronic trade as its main content. in 1998, cities such as beijing and shanghai launched e-commerce projects to carry out online shopping and online transactions.

in september of the following year, alibaba was founded. after that, e-commerce websites sprang up like mushrooms after rain, initially forming a new service industry with an increasingly clear industrial chain.

at the same time, the scale of china's internet users has expanded rapidly. the "statistical report on the development of china's internet" shows that as of june 2024, the scale of my country's internet users will be nearly 1.1 billion, and the internet penetration rate will reach 78.0%.

with the growth of users and the increasing richness of online service scenarios, the e-commerce market is also growing rapidly. the "14th five-year plan for e-commerce development" shows that my country's e-commerce transaction volume has maintained rapid growth, reaching 37.2 trillion yuan in 2020, and the expected target for 2025 is 46 trillion yuan.

according to institutional estimates, the scale of my country's e-commerce market will reach this goal in 2023. the "2023 china e-commerce market data report" released by the e-commerce research center of the china economic net, a social think tank, shows that the scale of china's e-commerce market will reach 50.57 trillion yuan in 2023. from 2019 to 2022, the scale of domestic e-commerce was 35.63 trillion yuan, 38.16 trillion yuan, 42.13 trillion yuan, and 47.57 trillion yuan respectively.

experts said that although different algorithms lead to different results, they still generally reflect the huge scale and growth trend of china's e-commerce.

among them, new e-commerce represented by live broadcast e-commerce, content e-commerce, interest e-commerce, short video e-commerce, social e-commerce, reverse customization, and community e-commerce has flourished and become an important driving force for consumption upgrading. according to data from the national bureau of statistics, from january to august this year, my country's online retail sales of physical goods increased by 8.1% year-on-year, accounting for 25.6% of the total retail sales of consumer goods.

while activating business formats, my country's e-commerce has gradually cultivated strong comparative advantages, and foreign trade formats such as cross-border e-commerce have quickly emerged. after experiencing rapid development with a growth rate of more than 10 times in 5 years, my country's cross-border e-commerce momentum remains strong. in the first half of 2024, my country's cross-border e-commerce imports and exports reached 1.22 trillion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 10.5%, 4.4 percentage points higher than the overall growth rate of my country's foreign trade in the same period.

"china's e-commerce has grown from nothing to something, from small to large, from '1' to continuously record high numbers in various fields, which has played an important role in promoting economic and social development." hong yong, an expert from the think tank of the china digital integration 50 forum, said that with the continuous advancement and innovation of technology, e-commerce will be more closely integrated with the real industry, promoting the deep integration of online and offline. this will not only promote the transformation of consumption patterns, but also drive the optimization and upgrading of supply chain management, logistics and distribution, and inject more momentum into economic development and industrial upgrading.