Alibaba to help fight poverty in Chongqing

E-commerce firm to help build 10 model counties in the nation

We will mobilize all the resources to enable 800 poverty-stricken counties in China to gain prosperity through e-commerce.” Daniel Zhang , CEO of Alibaba Group

China’s e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding Ltd on Thursday announced a plan to help rural people in southwest China’s Chongqing escape poverty — part of the country’s overall effort to eradicate poverty by 2020.

This move followed the company’s announcement last month that it will set up a 10 billion yuan ($1.6 billion) special fund to promote prosperity in China’s rural areas.

“We will mobilize all the resources to enable 800 poverty-stricken counties in China to gain prosperity through e-commerce,” said CEO Daniel Zhang, who is dedicated to helping rural entrepreneurs sell local produce to other areas, at an e-commerce poverty-alleviation summit in the municipality.

Chongqing, a mega city of 30 million people on the upper reaches of the Yangtze River, has 14 national-level poverty stricken counties and more than 300,000 rural people living below the poverty line with an average annual income of less than 2,300 yuan ($360).

“We don’t want to help poor people by only offering them fish, but enable them to be self-reliant so they know how to fish for themselves,” Zhang said.

“We will help them improve their life in a sustainable way.”

To achieve that goal, starting from this year, Alibaba will help build 10 model counties across the country, exploring strategies to help poor farmers fight against poverty using internet technologies.

The 10 counties are located in Chongqing, Yunnan, Gansu, the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region, the Inner Mongolia autonomous region, and Anhui, Fujian, Jilin and Guizhou provinces.

The company will also set up official poverty relief service stations for those counties on its e-commerce platforms to promote local produce.

Alibaba has been developing the rural market since 2014. Rural Taobao, a branch to develop the e-commerce market in rural China, has built nearly 30,000 village service stations in about 700 counties of 29 provinces, according to Wang Jianxun, vice-president of Alibaba.

“We have trained about 50,000 people to serve customers in rural areas,” Wang said.

Last year, Alibaba launched a local melon project in Xinjiang, lifting more than 10,000 families out of poverty.

E-commerce in rural China has been growing fast in recent years, thanks to improving infrastructure and convenient technologies.

The total online sales volume of agricultural products reached more than 240 billion yuan in 2017, up 53.3 percent over the previous year. There are 9.85 million online shops run by farmers and they employed more than 280 million people.

“E-commerce has played an important role helping rural areas get out of poverty,” said Kong Fusheng, deputy director of the department of Market System Development at China’s Ministry of Commerce.

In 2017, more than 28 million users purchased agricultural products from the poverty-stricken areas on Alibaba’s online retail platforms.