Chinese vice premier stresses e-commerce

Chinese Vice Premier Wang Yang said on Friday that e-commerce is a key "engine" for economic and social growth.

He made the remarks while visiting JD.com, a leading e-commerce giant in China.

As a complex, strategic and fundamental sector, e-commerce is crucial to boosting consumption, stabilizing growth, restructuring the economy, promoting transformation, creating jobs and benefiting people's livelihood, Wang said.

China's e-commerce has been growing rapidly in the new century, but there are problems, such as a disorganized growth mode and low product quality, Wang said.

More efforts should be made to learn from advanced practices across the world and to achieve sustainable and healthy development of the sector, Wang said.

Enterprises should be given full play in e-commerce and governments should be sober on government intervention, Wang said.

Laws and codes on e-commerce should be upgraded, Wang said.

More policies must be mapped to encourage e-commerce enterprises to explore new businesses such as e-financing and cross-border e-commerce, Wang said.

China reported 564 million netizens at the end of 2012, including 200 million frequent online shoppers.

Soaring demand for delivery services has boosted the courier industry. By the end of 2012, there were some 8,000 registered courier firms, employing around 900,000 people across the country.