The second Shanghai Double Five Shopping Festival has seen remarkable achievements so far, and is to hold a further over 400 activities.

Since the festival was launched on May 1, data have shown the huge potential and strong attraction of the Shanghai consumer market, the city's Commission of Commerce said.

Between May 1 and 15, the city’s online retail sales jumped 12.8 percent year on year to 61.69 billion yuan (US$9.58 billion), with the business volume of express deliveries in Shanghai reaching 146 million units, up 22 percent.

Offline consumption amounted to 121.05 billion yuan, an increase of 10.4 percent from a year earlier, among which the city's 200 key large-scale commercial enterprises realized a total operating income of 16.69 billion yuan, up 27.9 percent from the previous quarter and up 15.9 percent from the same period last year.

So far, 265 key events and more than 1,100 special activities have been held during this year’s festival.

For the next phase, the city is set to launch over 100 key events and more than 320 featured activities from late May to early June, according to the commission.

Using the platform of the shopping festival, more new products will make their debut in Shanghai, and more brands will promote their culture and innovations, it said.

One highlight is a broader trial of digital yuan payment.

Under the guidance of the Shanghai headquarters of the People’s Bank of China and the city's Financial Regulatory Bureau, the pilot program of e-yuan payment, as a key player in promoting the digital transformation of commerce, has taken the lead in showing up in some core commercial areas, including Nanjing Road, Huaihai Road, Xintiandi, Yuyuan Garden, Lujiazui, Xujiahui and North Bund.

At present, more of the city's key commercial districts, streets, enterprises and platforms are getting tested in an orderly manner, and the payment environment is being continuously optimized, the commission said.

Meanwhile, more events related to food and beverage, new retail, the nighttime economy, tourism and health care will be held in the coming weeks

 China urges Australia to treat Chinese enterprises fairly and stop interfering with the investment and trade cooperation between the two countries, the country's top economic planner said on Tuesday.

The Australian side has unreasonably restricted and suppressed projects and existing achievements of bilateral investment and trade cooperation, damaging mutual trust between the two countries and seriously affecting the confidence of enterprises, said Jin Xiandong, spokesperson for the National Development and Reform Commission.

Jin made the remarks in response to a previous NDRC decision to indefinitely suspend all activities under the framework of the China-Australia Strategic Economic Dialogue.

"China has to make a necessary and legitimate response, and Australia must bear full responsibility for this," said Jin.

He urged the Australian side to cease its interference and take actions to promote the healthy development of China-Australia relations

 Shanghai's population grew at an average annual rate of 0.8 percent between 2010 and 2020, according to data from last year’s census.

Growth in the past decade was at a slower pace compared with the 2000-2010 period, Zhu Min, director of the city’s statistics bureau, said on Tuesday.

The census put the population at around 24.87 million, up 1.8517 million, or 8 percent, from 2010.

The average annual growth rate in the 2000-2010 period was 3.4 percent.

Compared with data in the previous two censuses, growth had been relatively steady in the last 10-year round, Zhu said, consistent with implementation of the state requirement to control the size of populations in megacities.

It was also in tune with the targets of policies and measures related to overall population and industrial development, urban layout, public services and social management, he added.

Zhu said Shanghai’s attraction for migration remains strong, a major factor in the continued increase in the population.

The number of residents from other provinces and cities was 10.48 million, or 42.1 percent of the total.

The education level of residents grew rapidly over the decade, with the 33,872 people among 100,000 going to college compared with 21,893 in 2010.

Some 46.4 percent of the working-age population (16 to 59) were college educated, up 20.2 percentage points from 2010.

“This change was quite obvious, which was closely related to the great emphasis on and vigorous development of higher education in Shanghai, as well as the general improvement of national education levels,” Zhu said.

The number of residents aged 60 or above reached 5.8155 million in 2020, 23.4 percent of the total and 8.3 percentage points higher than in 2010.

That included over 4 million people aged 65 or older, or 16.3 percent of the total population.

“The trend of Shanghai’s population age structure was in line with that of the whole country, in which the proportion of children has increased, while the population aging has further deepened,” Zhu said.

The women to men ratio of the city’s population rose to 107.33, up 1.14 from 2010.

The number of residents living in the central urban area of the city accounted for 26.9 percent of the total, down 3.4 percentage points. This was “a positive result of the city’s polities on optimizing urban layout, public services and social management,” according to Zhu .

The population of ethnic minority groups soared 44.8 percent from 2010 to 399,800, while that of Han people grew 7.6 percent to 24.4711 million, accounting for 98.4 percent of the total

 China's value-added industrial output, an important economic indicator, went up 9.8 percent year on year in April as factory activities continued to pick up, data from the National Bureau of Statistics showed Monday.

The figure was up 14.1 percent from the level in 2019, bringing the average growth for the past two years to 6.8 percent, NBS data showed.

In the first four months, industrial output went up 20.3 percent year on year, resulting in an average two-year growth of 7 percent.

The industrial output is used to measure the activity of designated large enterprises with an annual business turnover of at least 20 million yuan (about US$3.11 million).