In Xiqianbo, a village in Suning, a county in Hebei Province in north China, Chen Lei, secretary of the village's Communist Party of China branch, has been guiding villagers to sell their fishing rods online since 2014.

In 2017, the total sales of the villagers' stores on Taobao, an online business platform owned by e-commerce giant Alibaba, surpassed 10 million yuan ($1.5 million). That year, the village was recognized as a Taobao Village by AliResearch, Alibaba's research institute.

To become a Taobao Village, a rural community must feature more than 100 active online stores, or more than 10 percent of households participating in e-commerce. Additionally, it must generate total annual sales of at least 10 million yuan ($1.52 million).

Nowadays, hundreds of thousands of fishing rods are sold by the village online every day. In September, an e-commerce service center was established, providing free e-commerce training for villagers from Xiqianbo as well as nearby villages. Next to the center is a live-streaming industrial park constructed by the Suning government. Every day, the site sees more than 50 farmer hosts live-stream selling their fishing rods by the pond.

Suning began to develop the fishing tool industry back in the 1990s, and it has become a major production and sales hub for fishing tools.

"In the past, villagers used to work as migrant workers in cities, making few thousand yuan a month. Now they can earn up to 10 times more by selling fishing rods online in their hometown," Chen told Beijing-based weekly Oriental Outlook.

As more villagers open Taobao stores, WiFi and logistical circumstances, too, have improved. The village struck a deal with a local telecom company to upgrade overall Internet services for villagers, enabling them to access fiber-optic networks. It has also negotiated with express delivery companies for couriers to come and collect parcels every day.

As of June 2020, there were more than 5,425 Taobao Villages, accounting for 1 percent of all villages in China and creating some 8.28 million jobs, the latest report of AliResearch revealed.

According to a research jointly conducted by AliResearch and Huang Jikun, a professor at the School of Advanced Agricultural Sciences at Peking University, the digital economy can help impoverished counties rid themselves of poverty and bridge the income gap between urban and rural areas.

Online retail sales of rural areas increased from 180 billion yuan ($27.4 billion) in 2014 to 1.7 trillion yuan ($258.9 billion) in 2019, an 8.4 times increase, according to a press conference on the digitalization of rural areas held on November 6.

E-commerce is just one aspect of how modern technologies are transforming rural economy. The application of big data and the Internet of Things to farming has also turned farming into a more scientific undertaking, saving time and labor.

Smart agriculture

In an agricultural machinery cooperative in Chengan, a county in Handan, Hebei, farming can be done by simply pressing buttons on a computer or cellphone.

Cao Chenliang, head of the cooperative, told Hebei Daily that the cooperative now employs an intelligent farming system. With the system, underground sensors can collect humidity and temperature data, which are subsequently transmitted to farmers' computers so that they can check the growth of their crops.

Intelligent machineries such as drones are used to spray pesticides. Large harvesters can identify the fields that need to be harvested and clear 133 hectares in two to three days.

During the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) epidemic, as agricultural technicians could not partake in face-to-face coaching, training in field management, planting and logistics was delivered online via mobile apps.

"The effect of online training is as good as that of face-to-face coaching," Cao said.

In Nanbeiyan, a village in Raoyang, a county in Hebei, resident Song Changjiang can adjust the temperature and humidity of his tomato greenhouse from home via a mobile app. Inside his greenhouse are a host of sensors, and monitors displaying data such as temperature and humidity levels.

The technologies have not only brought Song convenience, but also a reduction in overall costs. As the intelligent farming system can water plants and dispense fertilizers, it can reduce farmers' workload in a greenhouse by 70 percent. In addition to increasing productivity, the system has also lowered crop pests and improved the quality of the tomatoes.

"Our tomatoes will all be tested for pesticide residue and each will receive a QR code to ensure it can be traced," Song said.

Improved infrastructure

Rural digital economy would not be possible without the improvement of information infrastructure across rural areas.

China has made great strides in improving Internet coverage across the rural areas during the 13th Five-Year Period (2016-20).

Wen Ku, head of the information and telecommunications development department at the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, said at the press conference on November 6 that in the beginning of the 13th Five-Year Plan (2016-20) period, of the more than 500,000 villages in China, 50,000 did not have access to broadband and 150,000 had broadband with download speed of no more than 4 megabytes per second.

The ministry has been popularizing telecom services in rural areas since 2015. After years of work, the proportion of impoverished villages that have optical fiber increased from less than 70 percent in 2015 to over 98 percent at present. Over 98 percent of impoverished villages now have 4G network.

In Tibet Autonomous Region, over 99 percent of the 5,000 villages have optical fiber and 4G network now, with a download speed of 70 megabytes per second, which is similar to that in urban areas. Before 2015, only a dozen villages in Tibet had optical fiber.

Wen said the Derung ethnic group in Dulongjiang Township in Yunnan Province in southwest China, who lived in primitive conditions before 1949, has also entered the modern telecommunications era. The ethnic group today has access to optical fiber technology and 5G network.

Wen said the ministry has rolled out a policy to offer 50-70 percent discount on telecom services to those who otherwise might not be able to afford them. A farmer in Hebei said that his family pays only 45 yuan ($6.9) a month for broadband services.

However, Wen was quick to caution that even though the digital gap between urban and rural areas is narrowing, a big difference remains in terms of their ability to use Internet services. Relevant parties such as Internet companies should join forces to offer more training to their rural customers so that the Internet can take on a bigger role in rural revitalization.

(Print Edition Title: Rural Digitalization)   

Copyedited by Elsbeth van Paridon

Comments to jijing@bjreview.com