China’s e-commerce giants are looking for gold in rural areas as growth in big cities slows down
- Rural China added 3 million more internet users in the first half, taking the total number to 225 million, or 26.3 per cent of the country’s total internet population
Two years ago Li Yuhua’s daughter taught her how to shop online. Since then, the 51-year-old farmer in Wushan, a small village of around 100 people in China’s central Hubei province, has been a regular online shopper, even pre-ordering 2,000 yuan (US$282) worth of goods this week ahead of China’s Singles’ Day shopping festival next month.
“I have so many choices online and can get a refund if the products don’t suit me,” Li said, adding that she was tired of carrying goods back home from shops in town. “In our village, the elderly people who don’t know online shopping feel a little bit ashamed of themselves. They asked me to teach them how to use Taobao and Pinduoduo.”
Shoppers like Li are the new target for China’s e-commerce giants, including Alibaba Group which operates the Taobao platform, and Pinduoduo, a rapidly growing site that is popular in smaller cities and rural areas.
Rural China added 3 million more internet users in the first half, taking the total number to 225 million, or 26.3 per cent of the country’s total internet population of 854 million, according to a report on rural e-commerce development released last week by the China International Electronic Commerce Centre.
That helped boost rural online sales in the first half of the year by 21 per cent to 777.1 billion yuan (US$109.6 billion), outpacing the national growth rate by 3.2 percentage points.
