China's retail sales of consumer goods, a major indicator of consumption growth, totaled 39.2 trillion yuan ($6 trillion) in 2020, heralding the country's gradual economic recovery amid the COVID-19 outbreak, the National Bureau of Statistics said on Monday.

According to the NBS, while total sales of consumer goods declined 3.9 percent year-on-year in 2020, the new trend in consumption upgrades significantly spurred the consumer goods sales growth in the fourth quarter.

In the fourth quarter, total retail sales of consumer goods increased 4.6 percent year-on-year, 3.7 percentage points faster than that in the third quarter.

Specifically, retails sales of communication appliances, cosmetics and gold, silver and jewelry of enterprises above designated sized jumped 26 percent, 21.2 percent and 17.3 percent, respectively, during the fourth quarter, reporting faster growth than that in the third quarter.

Thanks to Chinese fervor for online shopping, the country's online retail sales surged 10.9 percent year-on-year to 11.76 trillion yuan in 2020. And the online retail sales of physical goods rose 14.8 percent to 9.8 trillion yuan last year, accounting for 24.9 percent of total consumer retail sales.