A design sketch of the live broadcast building for supply and marketing cooperatives in Yiwu. [Photo/zgyww.cn]

Yiwu, a county-level city of Jinhua, East China's Zhejiang province, spent 130 million yuan ($18.65 million) building a live broadcast building for supply and marketing cooperatives to promote the development of e-commerce, local media outlets reported.

Construction on the building started in April. It will cover about 8,644.8 square meters with a total construction area of about 22,004.16 square meters.

The building is located in Jiangbei Xiazhu, which has been dubbed China's "top livestreaming e-commerce village" in Yiwu.

It is expected to be developed into a live broadcast complex integrating live shows, host training, post-packaging, and application of 5G technology.

From January to September this year, livestream hosts in Yiwu held about 354,000 livestreams, generating 27.61 billion yuan (3.81 billion) in retail sales, a year-on-year increase of 10.64 percent.

In the same period, e-commerce trade in Yiwu increased by 7.62 percent yearly to 292.87 billion yuan.

With rich resources and a burgeoning e-commerce industry, many local shop owners in Yiwu have been launching livestream events to boost sales amid the epidemic.

The city has also developed live broadcast bases to attract leading companies. The official live broadcast bases of short video platforms such as Douyin and Kuaishou have already been established in Yiwu. A total of 20 live broadcast bases for e-commerce have been built, covering over 300,000 square meters and serving more than 70 live broadcast service agencies.