Jinyun county – administered by Lishui city in East China's Zhejiang province – saw a boom in e-commerce last year with online retail sales hitting 12.96 billion yuan ($2.01 billion), breaking the 10 billion yuan level for the first time, according to local media reports.

The record performance came in the wake of the launch by Jinyun last year of a raft of policies designed to support and stimulate e-commerce.

Officials from the Jinyun economic and commercial bureau said that in response to the rapid development of e-commerce and the continuous emergence of new business forms, such as livestreaming and short videos, innovative policies were rolled out to seize the opportunities.

The county also set up special training courses for locals to get familiar with the livestreaming and the short video industry, which helped a lot of people start up their own businesses.

Trainees Chen Yuexing, Ding Zhenxiong and Chen Xiaoyong formed a team after the training and founded a livestreaming platform to sell goods for local farmers, which not only boosted the incomes of locals, but also helped with the local employment problem.

There were a total of 2,190 active online retail stores operating in Jinyun in 2020, which directly provided about 6,230 jobs and indirectly generated about 16,380 jobs.