E-business Vitalizes Rural Economy

Thanks to the development of IT technologies and the logistics sector, E-business is booming on the rural market. This has stimulated industrial restructuring in the countryside, so creating jobs, and expanding and better satisfying rural demands. It has moreover facilitated rural residents’ consumption, and also their sales of agricultural products.

On September 10, cun. taobao.com, tailor-made for rural customers, began operations in 21 provinces (including autonomous regions and municipalities of a similar level). The Alibaba Group, China’s leading e-commerce player, plans to build 1,000 county-level service centers and 100,000 village-level service outlets in the coming three to five years, with a total investment of RMB 10 billion. These facilities, according to cun.taobao General Manager Sun Lijun, will be combined with the group’s other services such as online banking to build a smart countryside.