Community finds success in e-commerce

Remote Aksupa village - on the edge of the Taklimakan Desert in Beyinguoleng Mongolian autonomous prefecture in the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region - has gone through great changes with the introduction of e-commerce.

Since 2014, the local government has been collecting the villagers' products, including bread, eggs and honey, to sell through an online store it founded and operates. Although revenue was small at first, it has grown and is now a major provider for local families that once lived below the poverty line of 2,600 yuan per year.

When Awahan Osman's carpenter husband fell sick around 2011, the family lost its sole means of support. E-commerce has helped change the family's condition.

"I used to sell my bread in our village to make a living," the 49-year-old Aksupa resident says. "But now it's sold in big cities like Beijing and Shanghai."

She now sells more than 3,000 nang, a classic flatbread of Xinjiang, across the country every month - 10 times the number sold before 2014 - and she can make 2,000 to 3,000 yuan a month.

According to Zhu Ren, director of the government of Aksupa township, the area's arid environment and remote location force people into poverty. In 2013, many harvests were ruined by a hurricane, leaving about one-third of the population of 3,000 living below the national poverty line of 2,800 yuan a year.

"People's lives slid to the bottom of a hole, so we started thinking of a way out," Zhu says.

He recognized the business potential of local products - including eggs, honey and homemade bread - and realized that the internet could connect villagers with customers thousands of kilometers away. "Aksupa village has low levels of industrial pollution, so our organic products are exactly what people living in cities want," he says.

So far this year, the village's online store, supplied by nearly 100 local families, has earned 15,000 yuan through the sale of more than 10,000 eggs, and three families have opened their own online outlets. Liu Jianguo, a 51-year-old resident, said he can make more than 10,000 yuan per year selling eggs online.

Patigul Halik, a township official, says almost every family in Aksupa village keeps chickens to provide eggs and meat, and the online store provides a channel for the sale of surplus eggs. When an order is received, Halik visits local families to collect a fresh batch.

In November, a two-story e-commerce service center was established to collect, store and process produce before it is packed and sent to cities nationwide.

With the money she has made selling her bread online, Osman, the baker, has bought a refrigerator and electric bicycle - things she never thought her family would ever be able to afford.

"I don't have a computer and I don't know how the internet works," she said. "But I can see the changes brought by the internet very clearly."

According to Zhu, the township director, every resident will be above the poverty line by the end of 2017.

In 2014, the State Council Leading Group Office of Poverty Alleviation and Development, listed e-commerce as one of a number of effective policies to pursue. A year later, the use of e-commerce to alleviate poverty became one of the government's 10 Targeted Poverty Alleviation Projects, along with improved vocational training and microfinance.

Contact the writers through maoweihua@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily European Weekly 03/31/2017 page7)