China?saw a brisk auction market last year with a turnover of nearly 300 billion yuan (US$37.9 billion), 30 times the amount of 10 years ago, said the Ministry of Commerce.
The business volume has been growing by more than 120 percent annually on average since 1997, when the country's auction law came into effect, said Huang Hai, assistant to the Minister of Commerce, yesterday.
While government-commissioned auctions of materials confiscated by judicial departments used to dominate the country's auction market, other sellers such as financial institutions, state-owned asset managing agencies, enterprises and individuals have taken 47 percent of the total deals in the recent five years, Huang said.
