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Poverty in China
Tech

China’s farmers get help selling produce online as Beijing steps up poverty alleviation efforts

  • E-commerce giants such as Alibaba and Pinduoduo are increasing efforts to help rural farmers and merchants sell their products online
  • China has made eradicating poverty an important goal to be achieved by the end of 2020

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Farmer Chen Jiubei helped lift her family and village out of poverty through live streaming sales on Taobao. Photo: Handout
Zen Soo

In 2018, farmer Chen Jiubei made a business decision that would lift not just her own fortunes, but those of others in her town.

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It was something she stumbled upon: a relative mentioned that she had started live-streaming on e-commerce site Taobao, and while Chen said she did not know what that was, “I decided to give it a shot when I had some free time on my hands”.

Her live streams of herself doing farm work, cooking meals and talking about her products proved so popular, that she racked up 40,000 followers in just over a year and started regularly selling out her seasonal harvests of corn and rice online.

As the farmer, who is in her 30s, made a name for herself, others in her hometown of Badagong – a remote town in the central Chinese province of Hunan that sits 1,200 metres above sea level – began enlisting her help to sell their fruit and produce in return for a cut of the sales. Many of these farmers used to fall below the poverty line, officially defined by the Chinese government in 2011 as a per capita net yearly income of 2,300 yuan (US$326), but Chen said they now earn up to 3,000 yuan in gross profits monthly via her live streams, lifting the entire village out of poverty.

Chen is one of the growing number of farmers and rural merchants who are looking towards online platforms to promote products to consumers across the country, as China's e-commerce giants – such as the Post’s parent company Alibaba and group-buying platform Pinduoduo – increasingly focus on this group of sellers.

Companies have indicated that they hope to help alleviate poverty in China’s rural areas and to provide consumers with direct access to fresh produce and rural products while cutting out the middlemen in the supply chain.

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