In 2019, the value added of the wholesale and retail trades was 9.58 trillion yuan($1.39 trillion), up by 5.7 percent from 2018.
The total retail sales of consumer goods in 2019 reached 41.16 trillion yuan, a growth of 8.0 percent from the previous year. An analysis of different areas showed that the retail sales of consumer goods in urban areas stood at 35.13 trillion yuan, up by 7.9 percent, and in rural areas they reached 6.03 trillion yuan, up by 9.0 percent. Grouped by consumption patterns, the retail sale total of commodities was 36.49 trillion yuan, up by 7.9 percent, and that of the catering industry was 4.67 trillion yuan, up by 9.4 percent.
Of the total retail sales of commodities by enterprises above a designated size, the year-on-year growth of sales for grain, oil and food was up by 10.2 percent; for beverages, it up by 10.4 percent; for tobacco and liquor, it was up by 7.4 percent; for clothes, shoes, hats and textiles, it was up by 2.9 percent; for cosmetics, it was up by 12.6 percent; for gold, silver and jewelry, it was up by 0.4 percent; for daily necessities, it was up by 13.9 percent; for household appliances and audio visual equipment, it was up by 5.6 percent; for traditional Chinese and western medicines, it was up by 9.0 percent; for cultural and office appliances, it was up by 3.3 percent; for furniture, it was up by 5.1 percent; for telecommunication equipment, it was up by 8.5 percent; for building and decoration materials, it was up by 2.8 percent; for petroleum and petroleum products, it was up by 1.2 percent; and for motor vehicles, it was down by 0.8 percent.
In 2019, online retail sales of physical goods were 8.52 trillion yuan, up by 19.5 percent from the previous year on a comparable basis, accounting for 20.7 percent of the total retail sales of consumer goods, or 2.3 percentage points higher than that of 2018.