E-commerce in 4/5th tier cities and towns will really start off!
When every village has a Taobao service station (they are opening such centre in every village now), all the local villagers can directly sell their high-end agricultural products online and they will also enrich their life by shopping online themselves.
Of course, there will be challenges.
But the huge spending in infra in Rural China and Western China is reshaping logistics there.
Check these villages in China's poorest province, famous for white tea.
Geological isolation becomes their advantage after the expressways opened!
An electronic world trade platform would help make ‘Taobao village’ a global phenomenon
The "Taobao village" phenomenon, which mirrors the profound economic and social changes in China's rural areas caused by the Internet and e-commerce, has sparked innovative thinking in addressing inequality - persisting rural poverty versus ballooning urban wealth - in the world's second-largest economy.
The explosion of Taobao villages - defined by Alibaba as villages with more than 10 percent of local households running online shops and that net annual online sales surpassing 10 million yuan ($1.48 million) - across China is even provoking contemplation about duplicating the model in the rest of the world. Nevertheless, this move would need to be carefully planned to avoid an all too hasty leap as the e-commerce world, having thrived for years especially in China, is inundated with competition.
In a conspicuous indication of the enthusiasm in China's rural areas of capitalizing on the country's e-commerce boom, the number of Taobao villages reached 1,311 by the end of August, up from last year's 780, according to a report released on Saturday by Aliresearch, Alibaba's in-house think tank, at the fourth Taobao Village Summit Forum in Shuyang county, East China's Jiangsu Province. At least 840,000 jobs have been created due to the fast-paced expansion of the villages, according to the report.
Alibaba President Jin Jianhang expects the number of villages to exceed 10,000 in the future. Jin believes that the way in which the model is envisioned to develop to hit the 10,000 mark lies in the rural areas' integration into the modern economy as a consequence of the whole country's infrastructure building efforts.
That would mean continued efforts in bridging urban regions and rural areas, equipping Chinese villages with logistics networks and fundraising capabilities, and more importantly, devising suitable and viable plans for the fittest of the country's villages to survive the fierce competition.
In a speech delivered at the forum, Bert Hofman, the World Bank's Country Director for China, said that "much like Alibaba is a global platform, so can the Taobao villages become a global phenomenon." The World Bank and Alibaba signed an agreement on Saturday to cooperate in researching the Taobao village phenomenon in an attempt to better understand what makes some villages successful and others not.
Nonetheless, there are still numerous challenges in the way, Hofman stated, citing concerns that many of the world's poor are still offline and can't participate in the digital economy in any kind of way.
Furthermore, it needs to be noted that if the Taobao village were to become a global phenomenon, international e-commerce challenges will have to be overcome, otherwise, it would just be an illusion that the Internet and e-commerce can truly transform all economies and villages.
In this regard, the electronic world trade platform that Alibaba and other members of the B20 business group have argued for is a potential solution, as the proposed platform would harmonize rules, regulations, taxes and customs as well as e-commerce processing.
The author is a reporter with the Global Times. bizopinion@globaltimes.com.cn
