Ministry of Commerce Says Rural E-commerce Still in Its Infancy, Infrastructure Lagging
China News Service, October 16 (Wire) Wang Bingnan, Assistant Minister of Commerce, said at a regular State Council policy briefing on the 16th that at present, China's rural e-commerce development is still in its infancy, and problems remain such as “underdeveloped market entities, lagging infrastructure, and a shortage of talent”.
The State Council Information Office held a regular State Council policy briefing on the 16th. Zhang Feng, spokesperson and chief engineer of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, Wang Bingnan, Assistant Minister of Commerce, and Ma Junsheng, Director of the State Post Bureau, presented the relevant policy situation on improving the compensation mechanism for universal telecommunications services, accelerating the development of rural e-commerce, and promoting the development of the express delivery industry, and answered questions from reporters.
Wang Bingnan introduced that regarding the current state of our country's rural e-commerce development, its development characteristics can be briefly summed up in a few words. The first is “fast”, mainly reflected in the extremely rapid pace of our country's rural e-commerce development. In 2014, our country had 668 million internet users, 178 million of them in rural areas, and rural online shopping users reached 77.14 million, a year-on-year increase of 40.6%; the scale of rural online shopping exceeded 180 billion, a year-on-year increase of more than 60%. This is the "fast" reflected in the number of online shoppers and online shopping sales.
The second is “broad”. That is, the coverage is becoming broader and broader. In terms of people, rural online shopping users already account for 40% of rural internet users, and there is still relatively large room for development in the future. In terms of regions, it is gradually expanding from rural areas in the eastern region to rural areas in the central and western regions. Among the 100 counties with the largest growth in mobile online shopping consumption in 2014, 75 were in the central and western regions. In terms of products, what used to be mainly industrial goods going to the countryside is now expanding and developing toward agricultural products going to the cities. From January to September this year, online retail sales of fresh agricultural products already reached 38 billion yuan, more than 1.5 times the total for all of last year.
The third is “hot”. All sectors of society are very concerned about rural e-commerce and are actively throwing themselves into the construction process. Not only have major e-commerce companies such as Alibaba, JD.com, and Suning actively responded to the national call to go to rural areas and build rural e-commerce operating networks; even traditional commercial enterprises, postal services, supply and marketing cooperatives, and some “Ten Thousand Villages and a Thousand Townships” enterprises are also integrating and developing from offline to online. By August 2015, China Post had already put 100,000 service points online. Local governments are also very active; many places regard e-commerce as a new highlight of rural economic development and also as a new engine for transformation and upgrading.
Wang Bingnan pointed out that in this regard, the overall development trend is very good, but of course there are also some problems. It can be said that our country's current rural e-commerce development process is still in its infancy, and some problems remain, such as underdeveloped market entities, lagging infrastructure, and a shortage of talent. It happens that this 108th State Council executive meeting put forward some targeted measures to solve these problems.
At present, many parties have proposed advancing e-commerce development. How should resources be integrated? Wang Bingnan said that, first of all, rural e-commerce is a systematic project involving many systems and many departments. As a government department, the Ministry of Commerce, under the leadership of the State Council, must conscientiously coordinate this systematic project well and coordinate all parties to issue some policies and measures. For example, in directly participating in rural e-commerce, postal services, supply and marketing cooperatives, and some traditional commercial enterprises, especially the first two, as state-owned enterprises, play an important role in the construction of rural e-commerce.
In addition, he said that in promoting rural e-commerce, we must follow the laws of market economy development and promote effective integration by all sectors of society. For example, we should give play to the role of major social e-commerce companies, encourage them to actively integrate with these state-owned enterprises, give play to the respective advantages related to e-commerce, make good and full use of rural outlets and logistics resources, and strive to achieve multi-station integration, one-station shared use, one-store multi-function, and one-network multi-use, avoiding duplicate construction and wasting resources.
“Of course, I think that in advancing work on rural e-commerce, we still need to earnestly implement the spirit of the State Council executive meeting and integrate and drive forward all aspects of the work of accelerating rural e-commerce.” Wang Bingnan emphasized.