Across China: Remote villages exploring a digital way out of poverty

Holding a smartphone for the first time in her life, Wu Peishan did not believe such a high-tech gadget would be any use to an illiterate farmer like her.

Same as many of her neighbors in Tongguan village in southwest China's Guizhou Province, Wu, 64, never got a chance to learn to read and write.

Last November, in a program run by Internet company Tencent, telecom operator China Mobile, and mobile phone maker ZTE, a 4G base station was installed in the village and around 400 households were offered free cell phones. Staff from Tencent taught the villagers how to use them to get online and use Tencent's social media app, WeChat.

"It was not as complicated as I expected. They taught me how to make video calls on Wechat which is so fantastic," she said. "My son is working far away in Guangdong Province, now I can meet him on the cell phone when I miss him."

China still had 70 million people in the countryside living below the country's poverty line of 2,300 yuan (359 U.S. dollars) in annual income at the end of 2014. As the country plans to lift all of them out of poverty by 2020, promoting Internet use in rural areas has become important.

Xipu Village is located in a karst area where some 80 percent of the land is stony desert. The soil is too poor to plant crops, but is suitable for oranges and grapefruit.

During the past year, Internet use has been gaining popularity. In September, villager Tian Yi opened an office helping local farmers shop online and sell local specialties.

"In the past, we wait for the vendors to purchase the fruit, and they would set the price. Now we directly sell our produce online," he said.

The per capita annual income of the village was about 7,000 yuan in 2014, and is expected to grow by over 900 yuan this year.

The Internet has also changed the way of villages are governed. Shunzhai village, sitting in deep the mountains, has been lagging behind in economy due to poor roads.

In August, a road project ran out of money. Yu Huazhong, a villager who works in the county government, started trying to raise funds online. Yu set up a WeChat group of 300 villagers and asked them for donation. "We received over 10,000 yuan on the first day, and collected a total of 160,000 yuan within a month," he said.

"It was beyond my expectations since the villagers were not so willing to donate in the past," he said. "We concluded that the key of success is transparency brought by the Internet, as we published the information about each donation and how the money was spent."

Wu Zhengang, an official in Tongguan said the village government has been publishing policies, development plans and local government accounts in the village's WeChat community, but some problems have emerged.

Many local officials in Guizhou recognize that while rural people have great enthusiasm for online shopping, they are less keen on selling things.

"Most of the villagers are subsistence farmers who have no surplus produce to sell," he explained.

Pan Tao, director of a government e-commerce office in Guizhou, believes lack of Internet access and the poor logistics are still standing in the way of rural e-commerce development.

In October, the State Council unveiled plans to upgrade Internet infrastructure and logistics in rural areas. The government plans to spend 140 billion yuan by 2020 to provide at least 50,000 villages with Internet access. By then, about 98 percent of the nation's rural areas will be hooked up to the Internet. Endi