China's online sales boom during May Day holiday

BEIJING -- China's online consumer market maintained robust growth during the five-day May Day holiday that ended Wednesday, the Ministry of Commerce (MOC) said Thursday.

The country's online retail sales went up by 29.2 percent year-on-year during the holiday, with online retail sales in the tourism industry surging by 371.2 percent year-on-year, data of the major e-commerce platforms monitored by the MOC showed.

Online tourism has "obviously" heated up, said the MOC, adding that high-quality traveling is becoming a trend for domestic tourists.

Online sales in the catering industry also saw impressive growth, jumping by 56.7 percent year on year, the data showed.

Demand for smart home devices continues growing, with the sales of products like intelligent lights rising by 180 percent, said the MOC, citing data from the online retail platform Suning.

On April 28, the MOC launched an online shopping festival with over 260 e-commerce enterprises participating to encourage consumption. The festival will extend to May 12.

In the first eight days of the shopping festival, online retail sales went up by 28.1 percent year on year to 381.8 billion yuan (about 58.83 billion), among which online sales of physical commodities grew by 27.1 percent year-on-year to 304.2 billion yuan, data from the MOC showed.