E-commerce flourishes in Chinese countryside

Liang Qianjuan packs agricultural products for sale in Shitan Village of Shuiyang Township in Huixian County, northwest China's Gansu Province, Feb. 19, 2019. In 2013, she opened an online store and sold the locally produced agricultural products through the Internet, which contributed to local poverty alleviation and changed villagers' lives. (Xinhua/Fan Peishen)

Chinese farmers have become their own sales agents with the help of smartphones. Boarding the express train of rural e-commerce development, they can sell their products, which were previously unknown outside their hometowns, to customers around the country or even the world.

Statistics from the Ministry of Commerce showed online retail sales in rural areas reached 777.1 billion yuan in the first half of this year, up 21 percent year-on-year. The growth was 3.2 percentage points higher than the country as a whole.

Medium and small cities and remote areas will become another arena of e-commerce, as e-commerce companies move their offices to smaller cities and the countryside, where living costs are relatively low and people’s disposable income is growing.

A farmer in southwest China’s Chongqing Municipality has built an e-commerce platform that gathers agricultural products from 12 villages together and sells them to places such as Hubei and Guangdong provinces, as well as Shanghai.

In 2019, the country issued a document on furthering rural e-commerce pilot projects to facilitate the flow of rural agricultural products into the city.

According to Singapore-based Lianhe Zaobao, e-commerce has become a new tool for Chinese farmers to rid themselves of poverty.

Chinese economic miracles are now happening more often in towns and rural areas, according to The New York Times, citing statistics from the Morgan Stanley that by 2030, less developed regions in China are expected to contribute nearly two-thirds of the general consumption growth in China.