China's online retail trade ranked first in world from January to October, with a total of 2.95 trillion yuan in online transactions during that period. This is according to a report entitled “Internet Development In China Over the Last Two Decades,” which was released on Tuesday in advance of the World Internet Conference (Dec. 16-18) in Wuzhen.

"As of July of this year, the number of netizens in China reached 668 million, which is the world's largest online population. There are four Chinese companies listed in the world's top 10 Internet companies: Alibaba, Tencent, Baidu and JD.com," said Yang Shuzhen, head of the Chinese Academy of Cyberspace. 　　

China has outstripped the rest of the world in online retail transactions to become the world's largest online retail market. In 2014, China's online retail sales reached 2.8 trillion yuan, accounting for 10.6 percent of total retail sales in the country. From January to October 2015, total online transactions reached 2.95 trillion yuan. During the online shopping festival on Nov. 11, total sales on Alibaba and its affiliated platforms reached 91.2 billion yuan.

Growth of online retail sales comes from the parallel rapid development of mobile Internet in China. As of June 2015, China's mobile phone users numbered 594 million, accounting for 88.9% of all netizens. Among 374 million online shoppers in China, 270 million make online purchases using mobile phones. The development of mobile Internet has also brought great changes to travel, car rental, takeout and medical services.

The Internet has been a boon to China's economy, contributing 7 percent to the country's GDP last year. Sales of smartphones reached 2 trillion yuan. The turnover of mobile data and Internet services reached 270.7 billion yuan. The number of people who do online banking in China is now 307 million. Another statistic shows that China's cross-border online retail transaction reached 449.2 billion yuan in 2014—an increase of 44 percent from the same period the year before.

Meanwhile, Internet enterprises' market value has also continued to rise. There are 328 Internet-related Chinese listed companies whose market value is altogether about 7.85 trillion yuan, or the equivalent of 25.6 percent of China's overall stock market value. There are four Chinese companies listed in the world's top 10 Internet companies: Alibaba, Tencent, Baidu and JD.com.