Mexicans impressed by digital economy

"Geili!" repeated Daniel Gonzalez Arroyo excitedly at the moment his Chinese hostess sold a dozen necklaces in less than a minute during a livestream session in the village of Xinchangle in Zhejiang province on Thursday.

Literally meaning to "give strength", geili is a phrase commonly used by e-commerce livestreamers in China.

Arroyo, director of the Irapuato State Training Institute in Guanajuato, Mexico, was part of a Mexican delegation of officials and educators that visited Zhejiang last week.

"It's really good to see firsthand how the Chinese are doing e-commerce and building all the necessary infrastructure," Arroyo said.

Hosted by Alibaba Group's digital economy training program Global Digital Talent, the group took the weeklong trip to learn more about the transformation brought by China's digitalization, and in particular, how rural residents have enriched and empowered themselves through e-commerce livestreaming.

Part of the electronic World Trade Platform, an initiative launched in 2017 to help small businesses and entrepreneurs build globalized businesses through cross-border trade, the talent program currently operates in more than 15 markets across the world and helps "upskill "educators who, in turn, pass the knowledge along to their students.

Mexico is the electronic World Trade Platform Americas' first stop, according to Liu Qiang, who is in charge of the Global Digital Talent program. It has trained over 1,400 educators and tens of thousands of students worldwide in the past five years, and some 400 lecturers and 8,000 students are from Mexico.

In addition, six states, including Guanajuato, have collaborated with the program and set up eight "digital village" projects, which have greatly promoted the development of local economies.

For example, selling molcajete, a three-legged mortar and pestle, is an important source of income for farmers in Guanajuato. "In the past, they could only sell them to inbound tourists on the side of highways," Liu said. The onset of COVID-19 significantly curtailed their revenue.

Situated in central Mexico, Guanajuato state is the main food producer in the country, according to Global Water Partnership, an intergovernmental organization.

After joining the "digital village "projects, local villagers learned to sell their products online and prices and sales of molcajetes witnessed a significant rebound, said Liu.

One of the Chinese case studies they have closely watched is Xinchangle village, Zhuji city, known as China's largest freshwater pearl processing and trading center.

"With a permanent population of a little over 2,000, almost every household in the village grows pearls and three-fourths of the residents work in e-commerce livestreaming, selling pearl products," said He Lixin, Party secretary of the village, popularly called the "Pearl Village".

In 2022, online and offline sales reached 6 billion yuan ($864 million), 4 billion of which came from e-commerce livestreaming, according to He, who added the village's per capita GDP now stands at $30,000.

Arroyo said he only knew about China's "Pearl Village" from his training materials, and when he eventually came in person, it was even more amazing than he imagined.

"We want to learn from you and replicate the success in Mexico," he said, revealing that so far, graduates from Alibaba's Global Digital Talent program in Mexico have helped digitally transform more than 1,500 small and micro businesses in his country.

Miguel Cuevas, strategic projects and innovation chief at the Ministry of Education of Guanajuato, who led the delegation, concurred.

"We want to encourage our universities to learn from these villages and entrepreneurs," he said, adding that his task after returning to Mexico is to integrate more cases like the "Pearl Village" into Mexico's tertiary education so that Mexican people can benefit more from the development of the digital economy.

The latest figures from the Mexican Association of Online Sales show that Mexico's e-commerce sales jumped by 23 percent year-on-year in 2022, growing to 528 billion pesos ($28.7 billion).