E-commerce joins campaign to combat poverty

Poverty alleviation is a social responsibility

Tang said there needs to be special policies and measures to help underdeveloped regions solve e-commerce development issues. For example, the government can set up village e-commerce service stations and train one or several people per station. He said in the meantime, local governments also need to help villages build logistics systems, as commercial enterprises relying on the market mechanism alone will not give priority to setting up logistics in underdeveloped regions. City promotions should also be employed, and urban residents should be encouraged to purchase more from rural retailers online. Tang said poverty alleviation relies not only on the government and enterprises, but also on the social force.

To let the social force play a role in poverty alleviation, Tang said the market should be allowed to do what it can, and the government shall only play a role in sectors where enterprises are not willing to get involved, such as skills training, internet infrastructure building, remote areas logistics subsidy, and encouraging urban residents to make online purchases from retailers from underdeveloped regions. He said the government should do only what the market can’t.

The YouChange China Social Entrepreneur Foundation has always been actively involved in the poverty alleviation campaign. The e-commerce capability building project by the Foundation helps poor rural residents start their e-commerce businesses, providing online and offline training. The Foundation teaches e-commerce basics and gives operation instructions live online to help rural residents increase their income generating ability, and promote local development.

YouChange has launched pilot e-commerce training programs in 100 villages across the provinces of Gansu, Guizhou, Jiangxi and Hebei. Other than face-to-face training, Tang said YouChange also plans to use case studies to help poor farmers learn e-commerce knowledge. For example, if farmers want to sell carrots online, the village station will help them find other farmers who have successfully done so through the Foundation’s website, and by watching previous examples, farmers will learn how to make online promotions, manage purchases, and receive payments. The e-commerce station archives several hundred documentaries on the internet sales of agricultural products. “The training is different than other forms of training as it teaches farmers step by step. This kind of large-scale long term training model can only be achieved on the internet,” said Tang.

Walmart Foundation has already signed an agreement with Youchange to promote the training model to 10,000 villages.

Poverty alleviation needs multiple approaches

According to the latest survey by the State Council Poverty Alleviation Office, of the current 70 million poor rural population, 42 percent of the poverty are caused by diseases, 20 percent by disasters, 10 percent by lack of schooling, 8 percent by weak work ability and 20 percent by other causes. Most of those farmers have no additional means to generate income. Tang said backward infrastructures, poor and even unsuitable living environments for humans are some of the reasons causing poverty in those regions, while the only way for them is to relocate, the government must assume the leading role to solve the issue. E-commerce can only help those individuals and families that have work ability, and there has to be other means to help combat poverty where e-commerce can’t reach.

Poverty alleviation needs multiple approaches, whereas e-commerce building is one of them. Tang said e-commerce solves the sales channel issue, whereas technology support solves the production issue. He said e-commerce would be a great help to farmers once the right sales channels are established.

Many online retailers have realized this issue and on September 25, 2015, the State Council Poverty Alleviation Office signed a strategic cooperation agreement with Suning Cloud. In March 2015, JD.com introduced the 3F strategy (Factory to Country, Finance to Country, and Farm to Table) and introduced rural credit products in September. JD’s rival Alibaba has begun investing in the rural market even earlier. Its online platform Taobao has already launched services in rural areas.