Rural Taobao Becomes a New Highlight of Double Eleven, Urban-Rural Gap Gradually Narrowing

“Double Eleven”, a shopping carnival, has ended. Compared with previous years' “Double Eleven”, this year, besides the major e-commerce platforms returning with full loads, villagers who have long lived in rural areas participating in “Double Eleven” through the Rural Taobao service station platform is also a brand-new highlight, and this happens to be both an expectation and a microcosm of narrowing the urban-rural gap in the recommendations of the 13th Five-Year Plan.

On November 3, the “Recommendations of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China on Formulating the Thirteenth Five-Year Plan for National Economic and Social Development” was released to the public. In this programmatic document guiding China's development over the next 5 years, there is much content closely related to people's daily lives. Among it, “adhering to synchronizing residents' income growth with economic growth and labor remuneration increases with labor productivity increases, and continuously increasing the income of urban and rural residents” has become the focus of attention for the broad masses of rural residents.

How can the income of urban and rural residents be increased? How can rural people live the same kind of life as city people? Neither can be achieved without policy support. Take the just-concluded “Double Eleven” as an example. In the past, it was hard for people to link rural areas and agricultural products with online shopping and “Double Eleven,” but now villagers are riding this fashionable wave of e-commerce, striding out of the countryside and closing the distance with the cities. Even more, just two days after “Double Eleven” ended, our province selected the top ten village sites by transaction volume, which was both surprising and gratifying.

China's “Guiding Opinions on Promoting the Accelerated Development of Rural E-Commerce” clearly states that rural e-commerce is an important means of transforming the mode of agricultural development and an important vehicle for targeted poverty alleviation. Accelerating the development of rural e-commerce is of great significance for boosting consumption, expanding domestic demand, promoting agricultural upgrading, rural development, and increasing farmers' income. With the intensive introduction of a series of policies supporting rural e-commerce, major e-commerce players have stepped up their layout in the rural e-commerce market, which has enabled the rural layout of China's e-commerce to make substantive progress this year and allowed the rural market to usher in the first truly meaningful “Double Eleven.”