Tiantai and Sanmen counties in Taizhou, East China's Zhejiang province, have been listed as models of e-commerce development in rural areas by the Ministry of Commerce, Taizhou Daily reported recently.

The two counties will receive financial support of 20 million yuan ($2.86 million) each for the further development of e-commerce in rural areas.

Tiantai is home to five Taobao towns and and 58 Taobao villages and has made the top 10 e-commerce counties in China for years in a row. In 2019, its online retail sales rose 14.3 percent to 399.96 billion yuan and local e-commerce traders offered 72,600 jobs.

Sanmen currently has roughly 3,400 registered online stores providing 4,900 jobs. Last year, its online retail sales soared 45.5 percent to 5.62 billion yuan. Its average annual increase rate is nearly 61 percent.

In recent years, Taizhou has seen rapid development in its e-commerce industry. As of the end of 2019, the city had 1,644 online stores exclusively for agricultural products on three major e-commerce platforms in China – Tmall, Taobao and JD.

The city will further guide commercial and trading companies in rural areas to market their products online and construct a market-oriented and sustainable rural e-commerce development system with smooth logstics and efficient services.