BEIJING - China saw surging online shopping in the second quarter of 2013 with transactions totaling 437.13 billion yuan (about 70.8 billion US dollars), showed new data on Sunday.

The figure was a 24.2-percent quarter-to-quarter increase, and a 45.3 percent year-on-year increase, according to a research report released by iResearch, China's leading Internet industry research company.

According to the National Bureau of Statistics, total retail sales of consumer goods amounted to 6.03 trillion yuan nationwide in the period.

This indicates that online shopping now accounts for about 7.3 percent of consumer retail in China.

In the second quarter, China's E-commerce giants initiated several rounds of collective price wars to stimulate consumption.

According to the iResearch report, the price war has developed from a means of competition into a market tool used by E-commerce companies to tap and stimulate customers' purchasing desire.

Customers' online shopping behavior will become more and more rational with declining sensitivity on the price war, it added, suggesting that E-commerce companies gain core competence by improving their sales platform and supply chain.