The Internet Plus does not play favorites with the rich or the poor, adding momentum to rural development

A situation I learned about in Gansu Province these past few days while accompanying a State Council inspection team made me quite surprised.

When the province reported to the inspection team on vigorously developing new industries and new business forms, it mentioned one thing: in 2014, the Gansu Provincial Government and Alibaba Group signed a strategic cooperation framework agreement, and the two sides jointly built the Taobao "Distinctive China - Gansu Pavilion" as well as offline physical stores. Unexpectedly, in April this year, the "Taobao Gansu Pavilion" ranked first in traffic, second in comprehensive ranking and third in platform sales volume among the country's provincial-level pavilions.

And within Gansu Province, Longnan City, located in the Qinba Mountains and with backward transportation infrastructure, unexpectedly became Gansu's "largest e-commerce city", with more than 6,000 online stores already opened across the city. Local specialty agricultural products such as olive, Sichuan pepper, walnut and Chinese medicinal materials were sold across the country through the Internet, with sales exceeding 1 billion yuan.

The rise of e-commerce directly promoted the poverty alleviation of local people. In just one year, it helped 17,000 people find employment, and the per capita income of farmers increased by 240 yuan. Longnan was also designated by the State Council Leading Group Office of Poverty Alleviation and Development as the first pilot city for e-commerce poverty alleviation.

People often think that e-commerce, this new business form, can only take root in large cities such as "Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen". In the economically underdeveloped central and western regions, especially in poor mountainous areas with inconvenient transportation and poor communications, it is very difficult to develop e-commerce. Longnan's practice overturned this view.

In fact, the Internet does not play favorites with the rich or the poor. Moreover, the Internet can shorten spatial distance most rapidly, and it also helps shorten the wealth gap. While we are enthusiastic about Internet Plus finance, Internet Plus healthcare and Internet Plus automobiles, "Internet Plus" can also show its strengths in poverty alleviation.

In the past, one saying we often heard was "to get rich, first build roads". For developing the real economy, this is an absolute truth. When roads are open, goods can circulate; when roads are open, the door to the outside world can be opened, and people's thinking will change accordingly.

But in the Internet era, the network can absolutely take the lead. When tangible roads are not yet smooth, the intangible network can cross high mountains and great rivers and connect the entire world in an instant. Moreover, the Internet can not only bring mutual needs together, but also allow ideas to collide and connect quickly.

Taking Longnan as an example, the e-commerce model developed one step ahead allowed demand inside and outside the mountains to communicate directly, found end users after removing intermediate links, and turned logistics from whole into parts, greatly easing the pressure of backward transportation. Transporting tens of thousands of tons of agricultural products at once and breaking them down into countless express parcels leaving the mountains are two completely different transport concepts, and the bottleneck constraints of roads will be significantly reduced.

In addition, the characteristics of low threshold and low risk have already been proven in the development of urban e-commerce. This new business model is equally suitable for entrepreneurs in poor areas with weak economic strength. Moreover, Longnan also has a group of college graduate village officials. They are educated, knowledgeable and familiar with the Internet, and were among the first batch of testers among Longnan's more than 6,000 e-commerce operators. College graduate village officials understand external demand and are also familiar with local resources, becoming seeds of entrepreneurship, leading mountain residents into the Internet and onto the road of shaking off poverty and becoming rich without leaving their villages.

Longnan's story tells us that the Internet is by no means the exclusive preserve of big cities; it can also accomplish a great deal in remote mountainous areas. For western provinces like Gansu, building expressways into every mountain still takes time, but getting broadband networks in first is likewise a bridge connecting to the world. "Internet Plus remote mountains and out-of-the-way places" may be precisely a shortcut to changing the poor and backward appearance of mountainous areas.