China's e-commerce market expands by 31% in 2014

SHANGHAI - China's e-commerce market hit 13.4 trillion yuan ($2.2 trillion) in 2014, up 31.4 percent year on year, according to a report released on Wednesday.

The volume of business-to-business (B2B) market reached 10 trillion yuan, up 21.9 percent. Online retail trade reached 2.82 trillion yuan, up 49.7, according to the China E-Commerce Research Center (CECRC).

B2B business and online retail respectively accounted for 74.6 percent and 21 percent the market.

As of the end of 2014, more than 2.5 million people worked directly in e-commerce and more than 18 million indirectly.

E-commerce is a new growth engine for China's economy and has strong impacts on the IT market and business models of traditional industries, including the retail, education and medical care, said Zhang Zhouping, a CECRC analyst.