Rural e-commerce development has overheated; it is time to pour some cold water on it
Right now, China's rural e-commerce Great Leap Forward movement is surging forward like a raging fire!
From the premier to the village chief, all levels are talking about e-commerce and pushing e-commerce. A massive amount of fiscal resources is being poured into it. Almost every county and city is building an e-commerce industrial park, and every village is planning to build an e-commerce trading platform.
What is the biggest problem in rural China?
There are two internal causes: one is that the endogenous financial supply is ineffective, mainly because finance and land property rights do not match; the other is that the organizational supply is ineffective, mainly because the economic foundation supporting village community organizations has been hollowed out, and the existing organizations have become an empty shell.
Hundreds of millions of highly dispersed small farmers engage year after year in disordered, viciously competitive production and business activities. All problems stem from this, and the difficulty of solving them also stems from this.
Why have the Agricultural Bank, credit cooperatives, supply and marketing cooperatives, insurance companies and others fled the countryside?
The Agricultural Bank, credit cooperatives, supply and marketing cooperatives, insurance companies and others are all institutions that serve agriculture, rural areas and farmers, and are even government policy institutions serving agriculture, rural areas and farmers. Why have they all fled the countryside?
Because the countryside lacks the endogenous functions of blood production and power generation, so there is no point in them transfusing blood and charging the batteries of the countryside.
Many coal bosses and real estate bosses became newly rich, and all rushed into agriculture and rural areas following Liu Chuanzhi, and all lost heavily, lost miserably! You do not have Liu Chuanzhi's ability to get wool from a cow, and you still dare to rush in?! The Agricultural Bank, rural credit cooperatives, supply and marketing cooperatives, insurance companies and others have all fled. Do you think they are fools? That only you are capable? You are badly mistaken!
When e-commerce enters the village, does that mean that just because something has grown on your head, you have heaven-reaching powers?
Leading agricultural enterprises told the story of "company + farmer households" for 20 years. Once Premier Wen no longer embraced it, the story could no longer be spun. E-commerce has arrived, Premier Li embraces it, and someone has shouted that e-commerce will save agriculture, rural areas and farmers?! How similar this is to the time when leading enterprises were said to save agriculture, rural areas and farmers!
If e-commerce cannot solve the two difficult problems of ineffective rural financial supply and ineffective organizational supply, then rural e-commerceization will only be another Great Leap Forward movement. If e-commerce solves the difficult problems of ineffective rural financial supply and organizational supply, that is another matter. But so far, I have listened to the reports by the two largest rural e-commerce giants, Taobao and JD.com, at the China-Europe Agriculture and Commerce Forum, and their rural e-commerce plans did not move me at all, because they did not touch on the problems of rural financial supply and organizational supply at all, and the story they told was not even as moving as the earlier "company + farmer households." The only new thing was "Internet Plus." As for this thing called "Internet Plus," does it mean that whoever wears it on his head has heaven-reaching powers?!
Every village spends money to buy an "Internet Plus" and put it on, and then the problems of agriculture, rural areas and farmers across the country will be solved?!
Yuan Longping said: If you use my seeds, the problem of eating will be solved. Anhui people used them, so why did they want Teacher Yuan to leave! Teacher Yuan also feels wronged. It is obviously your basic conditions that cannot keep up, so how can you blame my seeds for being no good? If you know the basic conditions cannot keep up, then do not use government power to force-sell your good things to them!
No matter how high the hardware configuration is, if the software is no good, it is still no good; no matter how good the car is, if the road is no good, it is still no good.
In previous years, every village set up information disclosure platforms, and every village set up websites. It was said that once this was done, everything would be so good, so very good. Countless money was spent. What was the effect? Where was the good? Among the websites and platforms of all townships and villages across the country, how many are not dead websites?! Dead platforms?!
I give a thumbs-up to the calmness of the people of Zhuhai
Zhuhai has more than 200 villages, and so far there is not a single Taobao village. The leaders of Zhuhai and grassroots cadres are all very calm. They are concentrating their energy and resources on building the software of the countryside: creating a new system of rural built-in financial village communities and federations of cooperatives.
The government gives each village with enthusiasm 1-2 million in seed funds and invites professional institutions to help create built-in financial cooperatives within village community organizations, and then on this basis create built-in financial village community federations of cooperatives, thus solving both difficult problems: ineffective financial supply and ineffective organizational supply.
The working principle of built-in finance in village communities: a village is a society made up of acquaintances. Within the village boundary, land and other property rights are clear, villagers keep their word, and information is symmetrical. By establishing cooperative mutual-aid finance internally, villagers' land contract rights, property rights, collective membership rights and so on can be financialized internally, thereby multiplying villagers' credit capital. On this basis, the effectiveness of production cooperation, purchasing and marketing cooperation, and governance cooperation will also multiply.
The new system of built-in financial village communities and federations of cooperatives in rural Zhuhai has at least the following functions: first, deposit and loan functions; second, the function of mortgaging and realizing land and other property; third, the function of reserving and intensively utilizing idle assets and resources; fourth, the function of property rights transactions; fifth, the function of unified purchasing and marketing and distribution (solving the last-kilometer problem); sixth, the function of a settlement platform and Yu'ebao, where members can consume first and pay later, then settle the balance; seventh, the function of integrating and merging industries derived from large-scale procurement and sales capacity; eighth, the function of big data collection and its added value; ninth, the function of unified technical standards, unified brands, unified quality standards and internal constraints; tenth, the intermediary link function for the urban service system to serve small farmers, such as banks and insurance; eleventh, the function of elderly care and recovering filial piety, with senior-care public-interest shares and elderly priority shares set up in built-in finance; twelfth, the function of improving the dual-layer management system; thirteenth, the function of exploring new forms of realizing the collective economy; fourteenth, the function of expanding dispersed farmers' pricing power over agricultural products; sixteenth, the function of enhancing village-level organizations' service capacity and governance capacity; seventeenth, the function of serving as a handle for implementing government policies.
The construction of the new system of built-in financial village communities and federations of cooperatives in rural Zhuhai has given the countryside endogenous functions of blood production and power generation, and has also provided an interface and converter for the urban service system to connect with small farmers. This is foundational work. After completing this foundational functional construction, "built-in financial village communities and federations of cooperatives + e-commerce" will yield twice the result with half the effort; similarly, "built-in financial village communities and federations of cooperatives + insurance companies," and the countryside can do insurance; "built-in financial village community federations of cooperatives + Agricultural Bank," and the Agricultural Bank can serve small farmers...
Internal causes are decisive, and external causes are auxiliary. Built-in financial village communities are the internal cause, and e-commerce is only the external cause. When the internal cause has not improved, the role that the external cause can play is limited. Hardware is important, but software is more important. E-commerce is hardware, and the built-in financial village community organizational system is software. If the hardware is upgraded but the software is not upgraded, it is a waste!
Learn from Zhuhai, take reform as the overall guide, and give priority to practicing internal skills well! A thumbs-up for Zhuhai, and pour some cold water on the flashy e-commerce Great Leap Forward movement!