The person in charge of the Department of Electronic Commerce of the Ministry of Commerce introduced the development of electronic commerce in China from January to August 2025.

From January to August, China's e-commerce continued to develop healthily and steadily, expanding the consumption of goods and services, accelerating the innovation and application of artificial intelligence, and promoting mutual benefit and win-win results in international economic and trade cooperation. Online retailing has improved in quality, expanding consumption. Actions such as cultivating quality e-commerce and enhancing digital consumption have deepened and solidified, stimulating consumption vitality. According to data from the National Bureau of Statistics, from January to August, the national online retail sales increased by 9.6%, with a 6.4% increase in the online retail sales of physical goods. According to data from commercial big data monitoring, online sales of home appliances and digital products have grown rapidly, with online sales of smart wearables, computers, and smartphones growing by 25.2%, 23.7%, and 20.2% respectively. Online service consumption increased by 18.9%, with online sales of tourism and catering growing by 25.5% and 19.1%, respectively. Platforms are developing artificial intelligence to promote innovation. E-commerce platforms are applying artificial intelligence in areas such as merchant operations, industry connection, and scenario optimization to enhance the level of digitization throughout the entire circulation chain from the industry side to the consumer side. In the first half of the year, the R&D intensity of major listed e-commerce platforms ranged from 6.2% to 24.5%, higher than the average level of listed companies. Platforms are actively promoting the development of humanoid robots, intelligent logistics, intelligent touch, intelligent brain, and other embodied intelligent products, accelerating the construction of the artificial intelligence industry ecological chain and becoming an important driving force for the development of artificial intelligence in China. International cooperation promotes mutual benefit and win-win results globally. More than 20 events were held under the theme of "Silk Road E-commerce Benefits the World." For the first time, during the 7th China-Arab States Expo, the "Silk Road E-commerce" Cooperation and Innovation Development Conference was held, attracting over 300 representatives from China and foreign countries, and for the first time, the China-Arab E-commerce Communication Conference was held, marking the first step in institutional building of e-commerce. Workgroup meetings on e-commerce were held with Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan to promote policy exchange, industry connection, capacity building, and local cooperation. From January to August, the sales of key monitored platforms in Indonesia for bird's nests, Kazakhstan for safflower seed oil, and Uzbekistan for sweets increased by 160.1%, 143.2%, and 94.6%, respectively.