A hostess promotes a purse during a livestream at the Yiwu International Trade Market in Jinhua, Zhejiang province, on April 22. [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn]

A total of 13 counties or county-level cities in East China's Zhejiang province were included on a list of demonstration counties for China's new rural e-commerce model, which was recently released by the Ministry of Commerce.

The counties and cities include Pingyang county, Changxing county, Tiantai county, Jiashan county, Jiande city, Kaihua county, Songyang county, Shengzhou county, Pujiang county, Yongjia county, Sanmen county, Suichang county, and Yiwu city.

The total value of online retail sales in Zhejiang province was 1.98 trillion yuan ($282.5 billion) in 2019, up 18.4 percent over the previous year. The value for counties and county-level cities was 892 billion yuan, making up 45.1 percent of the provincial total.

Around 22,000 Zhejiang-based online stores are involved in the sale of agricultural products, generating 84.29 billion yuan in revenue, up 26.2 percent year on year. They made up 5.7 percent of all retail in the province in 2019, 0.9 percentage points higher than the previous year.

Zhejiang province plans to integrate the resources of e-commerce platforms and commerce firms in rural areas and accelerate the development of a logistics distribution system that spans counties, townships, and villages in response to a national directive. Zhejiang aims to build a market-oriented and sustainable e-commerce system for rural areas to better meet the needs of rural residents.