The Boston Consulting Group and China’s e-commerce giant Alibaba issued a joint report entitled “The New Retails: Lessons from China for the West” on the situation in the Chinese e-commerce market.

The authors compared China’s intensely growing digital marketplace with Times Square, as one of the busiest and most lively places in the world.

According to the report, China has now more e-commerce activity than any other country in the world. Data from the Chinese National Bureau of Statistics reveal that in 2016 Chinese consumers spent $750 billion (£578.40 billion) online, more than in the United States and in the United Kingdom combined.

The authors pointed that the core reason is not China’s large population, but rather the essentially different conditions in which e-commerce developed in China and in Western markets.