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Pingtan's people going crazy over online shopping

( chinadaily.com.cn )

Updated: 2013-08-16

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A recent report by taobao.com, China's largest e-commerce website, says that the people of the county of Pingtan, Fujian province have really been spending a lot when it comes to online shopping, spending, for example, 240 million yuan ($39.22 million), last year, by 35,061 taobao visitors.

The report was based on a survey of online consumer habits in county-level cities across China, and found that there were 1.8 million shoppers in Fujian province's 58 counties, spending 11.18 billion yuan. In the lead in this spending craze was Jinjiang county, at 1.29 billion yuan.

Meanwhile, back in Pingtan, the per capita amount of online spending was 6,881 yuan, which was higher than in 345 cities across China, including Guangzhou and Shenzhen, in Guangdong province, Fuzhou, and Harbin in the far north.

One of those responsible for this feeding frenzy, a Mr. Liu, commented, "This was way beyond what I imagined, so I checked my taobao bills and found that I spent more than 20,000 yuan on online shopping."

Liu explained that the money mainly went for clothing, books and electronic products and covered 100 online purchases.

Some of Pingtan's Internet fans explained that the county's high prices had driven many locals online and, in the words of one blogger, with the moniker Yiyeqingzhu, "Often I can't buy any good quality stuff at a fair price so I have to go to taobao."

The report also found that 22 percent of the people in county-level areas make their purchases from mobile phones, compared with just 17 percent in cities, or, as a Ms Zhang explained, "It's really convenient using the taobao app, that's how I pay my mobile phone bills because it saves time."

The taobao app also provides information on group-buying every day, according to a Ms Wen, which saves her time from surfing the Internet.

Edited by Chen Zhilin and Roger Bradshaw