The company plays a leading role in promoting e-commerce in China’s rural areas, which helps alleviate rural poverty and drum up business at once
China’s technology giant JD.com (JD: Nasdaq) has been promoting the modernization of the country’s rural areas through comprehensive use of technologies like livestream, big data, and cloud computing.
JD.com defines “Rural Digital Intelligence” as using cloud-based technologies to construct rural infrastructure in “The Rural Digital & Intelligent Whitepaper 2021,” a document the firm released on December 21, 2021 in conjunction with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs.
The whitepaper also put forward what it said is China’s first Digital & Intelligent Rural Index, a key indicator of the level of digitization in rural China.
The national index reached 23.92 in 2020, 4.97 times higher than 4.81 in 2016, with an average annual growth rate of over 20%.
JD.com has cooperated with more than 1,000 agricultural specialty-growing regions and industry belts, generating an output worth CNY 320 billion (USD 50 billion) since it started poverty alleviation projects in October 2020.
The tech giant has also established “Local Specialties Pavilion” online stores for villages in Sichuan, Shanxi, Yunnan, and other provinces. “Sales were over CNY 3.12 million from September to December last year with a profit of CNY 380,000,” Wang Xian, mayor of Yongshou, told the media. Yongshou is one of the first four towns in the company’s pilot program in Sichuan province.
JD’s vice president Wang Nan said that the construction of digitalized and smart villages was in line with China’s two crucial strategies: rural revitalization and digital China.
Apart from JD.com, a variety of enterprises have also been supporting China’s rural revival by developing “cloud agriculture,” including Pinduoduo (PDD: Nasdaq), Suning.com (002024), and Tencent (0700: HK).