SHANGHAI — China's platform economy has grown to over $2.39 trillion as of early April despite the COVID-19 epidemic's negative impact, said the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology (CAICT) on May 29.

The CAICT, under the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, said in its latest report that the platform economy, or mainly known as online marketplaces, has gained strong growth in China.

Digital marketplace firms each with over $1 billion market value in China have increased to 193 by the end of 2019. By then, the total market value of online marketplaces has grown nearly 200 percent to $2.35 trillion during the past five years.

Even though travel, tourism, and offline training industries were severely hit amid the epidemic, online economy including e-commerce, livestreaming, teleconference, online education, and online medical care have seen headwind growth.

Digital marketplace firms also contributed a lot in fighting against the epidemic globally and stabilizing economic growth and employment, said the report.

According to CAICT, there were 74 digital marketplace firms each with over $10 billion market value from home and abroad in 2019, forming a total of 8.98 trillion global platform economy. Among them 30 were based in China.