E-commerce joins campaign to combat poverty

Poverty alleviation concerns not only the government and enterprises, as it’s a social responsibility and every one of us should play a part in it. The government should consider how to encourage the public force to become more involved in poverty alleviation.

The just concluded Central Economic Work Conference raised the poverty alleviation issue. It promised more efforts such as funds and policies to improve the quality of poverty alleviation work. The 13th five-year-plan is the key phase for China to reach the goal of building a well-off society in an all-round way. Poverty alleviation will be a very important political task in China in the next five years. In early 2015, the State Council Poverty Alleviation Office has listed e-commerce as one of the ten projects to achieve targeted measures in poverty alleviation. On December 31, 2015, Tang Min, counselor of State Council and deputy chairman of YouChange China Social Entrepreneur Foundation told reporters that China’s Internet Plus strategy has helped find a new way to combat poverty using e-commerce as a platform, which will help underdeveloped regions in China catch up with their neighboring regions. However, Tang said the development of the new platform still needs social support, and other means such as education and technology should also be used. Tang said it’s the responsibility of everyone to take part in the poverty alleviation campaign.

Rural e-commerce a new way to combat poverty

According to the National Bureau of Statistics, currently there’re still 70.17 million rural residents living below the poverty line, accounting for 7.2 percent of rural population. In recent years, China’s e-commerce has expanded rapidly, and information technology and e-commerce have created a new opportunity for poverty alleviation work. E-commerce poverty alleviation aims to use its online platform to boost entrepreneurship and consumption, and promote local specialties in those underdeveloped regions. According to officials from the Ministry of Commerce, currently the e-commerce industry’s development in underdeveloped regions has been considerable. Seventy-five percent of the 100 counties that have seen the most increase in mobile online shopping are in the Midwest. Of the counties that have achieved sales of over 100 million yuan, twenty-one are below the national poverty line.

Tang believes the rapid development of e-commerce will bring many benefits. Farmers can increase their income by getting rid of the middleman. Urban consumers can have more choices when buying online, which may help ease their food safety concern and make their purchase more personalized. However, Tang also said to realize these benefits there has to be a way to maintain smooth cooperation among the government, farmers, online retailers, logistics and customers.

Tang said farmers didn’t benefit very much from the pricing despite urban consumers paying a relatively high price for the agricultural products due to middlemen. Online retailers selling agricultural products from underdeveloped regions face both advantages and disadvantages. Their strength is the products are environmental friendly and have regional characteristics, and the government’s targeted poverty alleviation measures will support their businesses.

In August 2015, the Ministry of Commerce and 18 other government departments jointly issued the Suggestions on Accelerating the Development of Rural E-Commerce. The document put forward that with expanding popularity of the Internet and improvement of rural infrastructure, China's rural e-commerce has seen rapid development, constant innovation, and enriched service content. E-commerce’s size continues to expand, however, the business on the whole is still at the beginning stage, and there exist many issues such as an immature market, backward logistics infrastructure, talent shortage and so on. Tang said other than logistics problems, products from underdeveloped regions must be packaged better in order to meet the higher demand of urban consumers, while the government, enterprises and social organizations should also help solve the talent shortage issue, as there aren’t as many people that are familiar with e-commerce and online retail in those regions.