Taizhou's online retail sales edged up 0.7 percent year-on-year to 52.73 billion yuan ($7.64 billion) from January to July, official data show.

A recent report released by the AliResearch Institute at Alibaba Group showed that the city was home to 295 Taobao villages and 48 Taobao towns as of the end of June, up by 35 and 9 year-on-year respectively.

Wenling county topped the city both in terms of Taobao villages and Taobao towns, with 93 and 14 respectively.

Taobao is an online marketplace run by Alibaba. The AliResearch Institute lays out three requirements for the designation of Taobao villages: the business operation site must be village-based, annual e-commerce sales must total at least 10 million yuan, and either the number of active online stores must be more than 100 or at least 10 percent of all households in the village be engaged in business online.

A Taobao town refers to a town or sub-district with at least three Taobao villages. It also must be home to at least 300 active online shops with over 30 million yuan in e-commerce sales on Alibaba marketplaces. 

By the end of June, Zhejiang was home to 304 Taobao towns and 1,757 Taobao villages, according to the report.