E-commerce platforms promote farm produce sales in remote areas thanks to improved transportation

In recent years, China’s e-commerce platforms have played an important role in promoting sales of agricultural products from the country’s previously unreachable regions, helping farmers increase their incomes and boosting rural vitality, thanks to the improved transportation infrastructure.

Livestreamer Madina promotes fresh white apricots in a livestreaming session on e-commerce platform Pinduoduo in a white apricot plantation in Kuqa city, northwest China’s Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region. (Guangzhou Daily/Zhao Fangyuan)

Livestreamer Madina has been hired by a white apricot plantation in Wuqia town, Kuqa city in northwest China’s Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region to promote fresh white apricots on Chinese e-commerce platform Pinduoduo. Outside the plantation, workers were busy loading trucks with over 4,000 crates of the juicy fruit, which would then be shipped by plane and delivered to customers in Beijing and Shanghai.

Selling apricots this way has only been made possible in recent years, as Kuqa, a remote city bordering the Taklamakan, the country’s largest desert, previously suffered a lack of proper sales channels and infrastructure.

To address the problem, China has been increasing investment in Xinjiang to improve the region’s transportation infrastructure, while e-commerce platforms have provided online selling channels for growers, enabling white apricots to reach customers nationwide.

More importantly, farmers can leverage e-commerce platforms to cut out the middleman and increase their incomes. According to Abliz, a cooperative member who has about 0.33 hectares of white apricot trees, he sold white apricots to middlemen in the local market in the past and could earn 36,000 yuan (about $5,560) per year. This year, Abliz’s annual income from sales of the fruit has almost doubled, as the cooperative began to sell them on Pinduoduo at a higher price.

Similarly, nearly all Xinjiang’s fresh fruits, such as Jiashi cantaloupes, tomatoes, and figs, can be sold all over the country in about two days.

A similar story is unfolding in Gulu village, Hanyuan county, Ya’an city in southwest China’s Sichuan province. Located on a precipitous cliff by the roaring Dadu River, the village had sat in isolation and poverty for hundreds of years.

After a highway linking the village opened to traffic in 2020, e-commerce has gradually changed local people’s lives. Local specialties such as pepper, walnuts, and preserved meat have made their way to outside markets.

China Post in Hanyuan county also plans to open online stores on Pinduoduo to further boost the sales of local agricultural products and increase villagers’ incomes.

These are just two typical examples of how online sales of agricultural products in China are expanding. Statistics showed that Pinduoduo generated more than 270 billion yuan in gross merchandise value from agricultural products sold on its platform in 2020, accounting for 16.2 percent of its annual turnover. The first quarter of 2021 saw orders of agricultural products on the platform expand over 300 percent compared to the same period last year.

Online sales volumes of agricultural products in China are expected to hit 800 billion yuan in 2021, according to a report on the consumption of agricultural products in China in 2021 jointly released by China Agricultural University and iiMedia Research, a Chinese firm specializing in data analysis services for new economic industries.

China also aims to ensure that the agricultural digital economy will account for 15 percent of the country’s agricultural added value, and the proportion of agricultural products sold online should hit 15 percent by 2025. In addition, internet access should reach 70 percent of rural areas by this deadline.

The burgeoning e-commerce sector has made the countryside a magnet for rural youths, who previously preferred to seek work in big cities. Now, more young talents are starting their own businesses back home. Pinduoduo will strengthen its cooperation with local governments and organizations, invest more in agricultural science and technology and give more training to villagers to help them sell products across the country.