China's online shoppers numbered 108 million in 2009

China had a total of 108 million online buyers in 2009, with an annual growth rate of nearly 46 percent and the usage rate of online shopping reached 28 percent, according to a report about China's electronic commerce from 2008 to 2009 released on Aug. 30.

Jiang Yaoping, the vice minister of the Ministry of Commerce, said that online shopping has become a major consumption trend among Chinese people.

China's online shopping scale has increased to 258.6 billion yuan (about 38 billion U.S. dollars), accounting for 2.06 percent of the total retail sales of social consumer goods and in the coming three to five years, the rate is expected to reach about 5 percent, the report said.

According to the investigation data from iResearch Consulting Group, the number of online shops has increased by 30 percent every year from 2008 to 2009.

However, the report also said that the number of individual online shops is relatively large now, but online shops with a high level of inventory and large numbers of sales are still very few.

By Zhao Chenyan, People's Daily Online