On the 1st, the Ministry of Commerce and 19 other departments jointly issued the "Opinions on Accelerating the Development of Rural E-commerce", and introduced 10 measures to support e-commerce, logistics, trade, finance and other types of capital to develop rural e-commerce. As a province with early development of rural e-commerce, Jiangsu has identified 13 rural e-commerce demonstration counties and 50 e-commerce demonstration villages. Not long ago, the Provincial Department of Human Resources and Social Security formulated opinions to support rural e-commerce entrepreneurship and employment. With the frequent policy warm winds, the spark of e-commerce is expected to set the prairie on fire in rural Jiangsu.

More than 100 e-commerce villages sell more than 10 billion yuan online in a year

Open the WeChat or website of "Qingengtian Agricultural Products", from the supply of agricultural materials such as rice seeds, pesticides, and compound fertilizers, to the sales of agricultural and sideline products such as lotus roots, dried whitebait, and silk scarves, to agricultural technical services such as cultivated land, sowing, and ditching, a virtual platform almost "catch all" Suyu's farming. Zhang Dongjian, deputy general manager of Qingengtian Agricultural Industry Development Company, said that the company's online sales have accounted for 70% of total sales, and the total sales in the first half of the year exceeded 68 million yuan.

Like "cultivating the fields in person", a group of e-commerce companies are becoming the main force in rural development. According to statistics from the Provincial Department of Commerce, there are more than 9,000 agricultural e-commerce platforms such as websites and online stores in the province, and nearly 4,000 online agricultural markets. Last year, the province's agricultural products achieved 78 billion yuan with the help of the Internet, including 18 billion yuan for agricultural products, with a growth rate of more than 30%.

There are 115 e-commerce villages in the province, and online sales exceeded 10 billion yuan last year. Zhu Weidong, director of the E-commerce Department of the Provincial Department of Commerce, said that there are two main types of products sold in e-commerce villages: self-produced agricultural products, 73 e-commerce villages sell products online including river crabs, turtles, flowers and trees, etc., with annual sales exceeding 2.1 billion yuan; processed products, mainly furniture, flooring, toys, etc., with a total of 72 e-commerce villages, with annual sales exceeding 8.2 billion yuan.

Rural e-commerce formats are rich and diverse. Farmers spontaneously go online, driving the industry from scratch and from weak to strong. Farmers in Shaji Town, Xuzhou, started from online sales of simple assembled panel furniture, forming a furniture industry chain; government-led, village cadres in Dazhong Village, Sucheng District, took the lead in opening a furniture processing factory, all of which were sold online. There are 329 online operators with sales of 220 million yuan; industrial clustering, Wujiang Hengshan wool sweater industry, with high industrial agglomeration, last year's transaction volume exceeded 100 million yuan; platform-driven, relying on Taobao, JD.com and other platforms, establishing special platforms to sell products, Nanjing Gaochun District established the Taobao China Specialty Pavilion-Gaochun Pavilion Platform, and Haimen Dieshiqiao Village launched the "physical store + online store" model represented by home textile e-commerce.

Every family starts an e-commerce business to add vitality to the countryside

The Internet narrows the time and space gap between urban and rural areas, and e-commerce is becoming a platform for farmers to start businesses.

From a "shabby village" to a well-known Taobao village, Dongfeng Village in Shaji Town, Suining provides a sample for this transformation. The online shop owner here used to be engaged in the processing and recycling of waste plastics for a long time. Now, 90% of the 1,180 households in the village are engaged in e-commerce, with annual sales of more than 1.8 billion yuan. Relying on an Internet cable and a computer, the rural e-commerce model based on the family unit quickly spread to the surrounding areas, and influenced by it, many farmers in Gaozuo Town, Lingcheng Town, Liji Town and Gengche Town in Suining City have embarked on the road of e-commerce entrepreneurship. E-commerce has also become a new space for many young people to return to their hometowns to start businesses. Wu Wei, who has a master's degree in chemistry from Germany, worked in a foreign company after returning to China. Four years ago, she returned to Dongtai to join the e-commerce company Senhu Trading Company. She said that Senhu already has dozens of stores on platforms such as Tmall and JD.com, with sales of nearly 400 million yuan last year, providing employment for more than 100 employees. Zhou Jinhai, deputy director of the Dongtai Municipal Bureau of Commerce, said that local farmers have started Internet businesses based on specialty products, and specialty e-commerce towns such as seedlings, furniture, and stainless steel products have emerged. The city's e-commerce transaction volume in the first half of the year was 5.1 billion yuan, close to the level of the whole year last year.

"Information asymmetry between supply and demand is a bottleneck in rural development, which makes it difficult to transform products into commodities." Gu Weidong, director of the Provincial Macroeconomic Research Institute, said that with the Internet, farmers can see their comparative advantages and have a direction on what to produce, how much to produce, how to sell and where to sell. Every family can start a business, everyone can innovate, and the township economy will move towards the village economy, making rural development more dynamic.

Don't let the "last mile" hold you back

E-commerce, due to its industrial characteristics, has broad development space in rural areas of our province. As Wang Xiangdong, director of the Information Research Center of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said, the "Shaji model" does not rely on the original industrial foundation, does not rely on scarce special resources, and does not have obstacles that are difficult to replicate.

However, as a new economic form, the development of rural e-commerce cannot be smooth sailing. "The constraints of logistics and express delivery are obvious, but consumers are very sensitive to this." Wu Wei said that rural express delivery generally only delivers goods to the town, and there is only one delivery a day. Their company originally chose to be located in the village, but because of the untimely delivery, it had to be changed to the vicinity of Dongtai City. Zhang Dongjian also said that logistics has held back development. They sell pesticides and other agricultural supplies online, with an average of 2,000 orders a day, but because the country lacks special regulations, express delivery companies are very cautious and have to coordinate transportation issues every day.

The research report of the Provincial Academy of Social Sciences shows that the "last mile" problem of rural e-commerce is prominent. Rural broadband access capacity is 12M, only 1/4 of that in cities; the provincial Internet penetration rate is 51.7%, but there are only 25.1% of rural netizens; rural transportation and rural roads are not balanced. Funding, talent and other factors are also important thresholds for rural e-commerce. Zhang Dongjian admitted that 80% of the company's profits are used for online promotion, and the money is a headache.

Senhu is preparing to build its own website. Wu Wei said that the investment in building a platform is in the billions, and it may not be successful, but this step must be taken. At the same time, there is a serious shortage of online marketing personnel, and nothing has been gained after recruiting for several years. These are very stressful for companies that have just started a business. Statistics show that there are more than 30,000 agricultural e-commerce platforms in China, of which about 3,000 are mainly engaged in agricultural products, but almost none of them are profitable.

Rural e-commerce villages and towns face homogeneous competition, low-price customers, and intellectual property protection challenges. In this regard, governments at all levels are looking for ways to change. Not long ago, Dongtai cooperated with Alibaba to set up 35 village-level Taobao service stations, with an investment of 10,000 yuan in each station to break the bottleneck of logistics to the village. Within the year, the number of Taobao service stations will increase to 150.

The Provincial Department of Commerce stated that it will promote the implementation of the project of 7 national e-commerce in rural comprehensive demonstration counties, give play to the leading role of provincial-level and above e-commerce demonstration counties, and improve e-commerce public services. Through policy support, cultivation and incubation, and standardized management, the province's "e-commerce villages" will reach 100; the Provincial Department of Human Resources and Social Security has broken through the bottleneck of rural e-commerce entrepreneurial talents, and provided entrepreneurial guarantee loans and interest subsidy policies to rural workers, returning migrant workers, college students, retired soldiers, etc. who start e-commerce. Entrepreneurship subsidies will be provided to eligible rural e-commerce companies.

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