Chinese government has accelerated its development of the enormous rural e-commerce business. The National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) signed a strategic cooperation agreement with Alibaba in Beijing on Wednesday, reported Xinhua News.
In the following three years, both sides will work together to set up more than 300 trial regions where they will provide incentives for people to come back to their hometown to start businesses. Alibaba will build around 100 county service centers and 10,000 village service stations in the trial regions picked by the government every year.
The vice president of Alibaba Group Sun Lijun said that this cooperation will on one hand boost the e-commerce development of rural areas, and, on the other hand, encourage migrant workers in cities to start businesses back in their rural hometowns.
In late January, China’s Ministry of Agriculture announced that it will conduct rural e-commerce trials for fresh agricultural products, agricultural information and leisure agriculture in 10 provincial regions.
Besides national policies, the last two years have also seen a number of e-commerce companies enter rural China. One example is tech giant Alibaba. It has developed a comprehensive online ecosystem to back its 2014 countryside strategic plan with e-commerce site and mobile app Taobao Nongcun or Taobao countryside in English, logistics network Cainiao, and rural internet finance platform Mybank.cn.
(Photos from Baidu Images)
