In China’s e-commerce boom, it takes a village
XUZHOU: Workers wielding screeching hand-held wood sanders toil overtime in Cheng Huaibao’s bunk bed factory, rushing to prepare for the wave of orders about to break on manufacturing businesses like his across China.
China’s Nov 11 orgy of e-shopping strikes tomorrow, with hundreds of millions of consumers expected to seize on promotional discounts to place up to a billion pent-up orders for everything from food to furniture and electronics.
So-called “Double 11”, or “Singles Day”, is the biggest day of the year for Cheng, accounting for around one-sixth of his annual orders and illustrating the impact that China’s years-long e-commerce boom is having right down to some of the country’s poorest villages.
Cheng’s town of Shaji in eastern Jiangsu province once relied on farming and, later, processing waste plastic.
Today, furniture production fattens wallets in Shaji, one of more than 1,300 communities across China dubbed “Taobao Villages”, areas that re-invented themselves as manufacturing bases to supply e- commerce giant Alibaba’s Taobao platform.
“It’s a new way for people here to make more money and get rich. It has really changed people’s fates,” said Cheng, 28.
The high-school graduate previously worked in an electronics fac- tory and later sold home appliances.
In 2010, he scraped together 2,000 yuan (RM1,270) and began making children’s bunk beds to sell on Taobao.
It was a propitious choice – in 2016 China relaxed its “one-child policy” to allow families a second child. Bunk beds are suddenly hot.
Cheng says his business is now worth 20 million yuan (RM12.7mil). He has purchased several homes and parks his Mercedes-Benz and Audi outside a factory that’s grown to 25,000 square feet and 200 employees.
“I’m driving a one-million-yuan car. I never dared to dream of such a day before,” he said.
Alibaba seized on Double 11 beginning in 2009 as China’s online answer to the late-November US “Black Friday” shopping spree, finding a sweet spot combining China’s love of a good bargain and the national addiction to smartphones and one-click payments.
But environmentalists complain of the ecological harm and accuse Alibaba of fuelling over-production and over-consumption.
Greenpeace estimates Double 11 deliveries last year produced 130,000 tonnes of packaging waste – less than 10% of which is recycled – and said e-commerce is actually more carbon- intensive than brick-and-mortar shopping.