BEIJING - Revenue from China's express deliveries in January rose 29.5 percent year on year to 5.81 billion yuan ($880 million) with volume reaching 250 million items, up 48.3 percent, the State Post Bureau announced Thursday.

Domestic inter-city items accounted for more than half of the month's revenue and business was most active in eastern regions, according to the bureau.

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Express companies were seriously shorthanded during the Chinese Lunar New Year shopping season, indicating the country's logistics sector is lagging behind its booming e-commerce market.

China's online retail sales last year doubled from 2009 to reach 513.1 billion yuan, according to a report by China's E-commerce Research Center.

The number of people using the Internet in China rose to 457 million at the end of last year, up 73.3 million from a year earlier, according to a report released by the China Internet Network Information Center in January.