Live-stream hostesses sell products in Yiwu, East China's Zhejiang province [Photo/ zgyww.cn]

From January to February, exports and imports were valued at 36.33 billion yuan ($5.14 billion) in Yiwu, Zhejiang province, according to the municipal customs on March 20.

Imports were valued at 1.46 billion yuan, up 26.7 percent over the same period last year, a remarkable achievement in light of the coronavirus outbreak.

The Zhejiang Electronic Commerce Promotion Center recently released the 2019 statistics on the cross-border online retail exports of counties, county-level cities, and districts in Zhejiang. Yiwu ranked first with a value of 24.11 billion yuan.

The city hopes to position e-commerce as a strategic and pioneering industry earmarked for key development. It has topped the list of the Top 100 E-commerce Demonstration Counties in China released by Alibaba for the past four years.

Meanwhile, Yiwu ranks first in China in the proportion of e-businessmen engaged in domestic trade, and second in terms of those engaged in foreign trade. In July 2018, Yiwu became the only county-level city to be approved as a comprehensive cross-border e-commerce pilot zone in China.

A logistics worker returns to work and sorts parcels wearing a face mask in Yiwu. [Photo/WeChat account: yiwufb]

Last year, e-commerce continued to maintain strong momentum due to a number of favorable factors such as the approval of Yiwu as the Pilot Zone for Comprehensive International Trade Reform, the effectiveness of Yiwu's cross-border e-commerce bonded import business, and the signing of the Electronic World Trade Platform strategic cooperation agreement between Yiwu and Alibaba.

According to local authorities, in 2019, the value of e-commerce transactions in Yiwu reached 276.89 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 16.92 percent. Cross-border e-commerce transactions were valued at 75.40 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 15.16 percent.