Emerging businesses such as online shopping, live streaming, community group buying, and social e-commerce have shown great vitality in stimulating consumption potential, upgrading consumption patterns, unblocking consumption networks and generating consumption enthusiasm amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

Official statistics showed that from January to May this year, the online retail sales of in Shandong province reached 157.45 billion yuan ($22.28 billion), among which the retail sales of physical goods reached 132.92 billion yuan, a year-on-year growth of 3 percent.

During the "618" online shopping festival from June 1 to June 18, the Shandong Time-honored Brand Association, the Department of Commerce of Shandong and the Shandong branch of Alibaba Group jointly hosted an online sales promotion of Shandong's time-honored brands and specialties.

In order to stimulate consumption potential, the Department of Commerce of Shandong has taken multiple measures since the beginning of this year, encouraging self-employed people and small and micro businesses to operate and sell on e-commerce and export platforms.

In the first five months of this year, Shandong's cross-border e-commerce exports grew by 124.8 percent despite the impact of the epidemic.

The department has also been actively promoting the development of e-commerce in rural areas.

By the end of May, 11 county-level e-commerce public service centers, 11 e-commerce logistics distribution centers, 152 township level e-commerce service stations and 3,056 village-level service points have been built and renovated in Shandong.

The province, which has established a product traceability system in key production areas, also has 17 public brands registered in its counties.

In addition, Shandong has organized training courses related to live broadcasting and marketing of farm products.