A woman carries handicrafts in Wantou village, east China’s Shandong province. So far, more than 900 households in this village of 1,800 homes have opened online stores on Alibaba’s e-commerce platform Taobao. (Photo by Chen Bin / Xinhua News Agency)

China’s booming digital economy, serving as a major engine of the country’s economic growth, has injected fresh impetus into the implementation of its rural vitalization strategy.

By the end of 2018, the size of China’s digital economy stood at 31 trillion yuan, accounting for one-third of the nation’s GDP, according to recent data released during a press conference for the second Digital China Summit, which will be held in early May.

China’s rural areas are growing at a faster rate than some first and second-tier cities when it comes to digital consumption, a recently-released report explained.

By December 2018, 222 million people, or 26.7 percent of the online population, lived in China's rural areas, up 6.2 percent year-on-year, according to another report on China’s internet development released this February.

Thanks to the improvement in network infrastructure in rural areas and emphasis on the rural market from e-commerce giants, the digital economy has helped to boost the country’s rural vitalization strategy, said Huang Hao, an associate fellow from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

For example, several famous “Taobao villages”, villages which have prospered thanks to Alibaba’s online shopping platform Taobao, have emerged in east China’s Zhejiang, Jiangsu and Fujian provinces in recent years. Online sales have created job opportunities for 28 million villagers.

Statistics showed that online retail sales in rural areas soared to 1.37 trillion yuan in 2018, up 30.4 percent year-on-year. Online sales of agricultural products amounted to 230.5 billion yuan, representing year-on-year growth of 33.8 percent.

China should continue to improve digital infrastructure, support e-commerce in rural areas and encourage the application of digital technology to promote the digital economy and boost the rural vitalization strategy, said Sheng Zhenzhong, deputy head of Alibaba’s research center for rural dynamics.

The country is also pushing forward a digital countryside strategy, which will further facilitate the development of digital economy in rural areas.