Yiwu in Zhejiang province saw its online retail sales rise 2.9 percent year-on-year to 37.18 billion yuan ($5.53 billion) from January to March this year, ranking first in the province, according to local media outlets.

Chen Jianping, a shopkeeper in District 4 of the Yiwu International Trade Market, has gotten used to making livestreams to sell her goods online. Chen often does 50-minute livestreams to display about 20 products such as fans and other varieties of goods for daily use.

Chen said that she would like to attract more buyers via livestreams and tell buyers that the Yiwu International Trade Market continues to operate smoothly in light of the COVID-19 epidemic.

Yiwu is an important hub for Chinese manufacturers and global small commodity consumption. The city has implemented various measures to help local merchants get more orders on online e-commerce platforms amid the epidemic while carrying out epidemic prevention and control measures.

As an e-commerce heartland in East China, the online retail sales of Zhejiang province in the period reached 458.65 billion yuan, up 6.9 percent from the same period last year, data from the provincial department of commerce showed.