The city of Wenzhou – located in Zhejiang province, an e-commerce heartland in East China – reportedly experienced a major surge in livestreaming e-commerce revenue in the first eight months of the current year.
E-commerce through livestreaming is widely regarded as a key emerging business in China and it has witnessed explosive growth amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
The livestreaming e-commerce sales posted by Wenzhou reached 8.51 billion yuan ($1.32 billion) from January to August. That performance ranked it fourth in the province, thanks to a staggering 71.5 percent year-on-year increase, data from the provincial e-commerce promotions center showed.
The province's capital city of Hangzhou ranked first in terms of the sales volume during the period, followed by its other cities of Jinhua and Jiaxing.
In August alone, livestreaming events raked in 1.23 billion yuan in Wenzhou, a substantial increase from July's total of 940 million yuan.
According to published data, most of Wenzhou's livestreaming sales were dominated by Chinese short-video platform Douyin, also known as TikTok. It contributed as much as 80 percent to the city's total livestreaming transaction volumes during the June 18 online shopping festival.
Statistics showed that in August Wenzhou had about 18,800 live streamers, ranking it third in the province.
Zhejiang reportedly has the most developed livestreaming e-commerce sector in China. The transaction volume in the January-August period accounted for 30.4 percent of the total in the country, topping that of any other province.
