China looks to e-commerce for growth impetus

BEIJING - The State Council, China's cabinet, on Thursday released a guideline on e-commerce development, to foster new growth drivers amid the economic slowdown.

The government pledged to create a favorable environment for e-commerce by cutting redtape, easing market access and lowering taxation.

Efforts will be made to strengthen resource sharing, online security, financing, infrastructure and credit system services, according to the guideline.

In the meantime, China will gradually regulate market practices to secure a fair competitive environment for startups, with the aim of building a unified and orderly e-commerce market by 2020.

The guideline also called for support to enable those in rural areas to benefit from e-commerce, and further opening-up measures to facilitate international cooperation.

The e-commerce industry has experienced a boom in recent years that helped stimulate consumption and investment, and the government is pinning its hopes on the sector to create jobs and facilitate the ongoing process of industrial upgrading.

Off the back of the rapidly expanding e-commerce platforms such as Alibaba and JD.com, online retail trade volume grew 49.7 percent year on year to 2.8 trillion yuan ($457 billion) in 2014, according to an earlier report by the China E-Commerce Research Center.