Rural internet speed-up should receive more attention

Recently, in order to implement Premier Li Keqiang's instructions, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology proposed to accelerate the process of “increasing internet speeds and lowering tariffs”, and to push relevant enterprises to step up network infrastructure construction; and not long ago the Ministry of Commerce also stated it would launch a special action plan for e-commerce, focusing on advancing rural and agricultural product e-commerce development.

Today, more and more agricultural product transactions are completed through e-commerce, and more and more farmers are using the internet to “farm”. Users are younger and the proportion of mobile online shopping is higher, and rural areas have even greater internet economic potential. However, internet infrastructure construction in many rural areas still lags behind; slow internet speeds affect the convenience with which farmers use the internet, and also keep rural internet economic potential dormant all along.

⟦NL> Therefore, in this new round of internet speed increases, more attention must be paid to rural areas. This is not only about advancing, from the perspective of equality, farmers' opportunity to share in the historic opportunity of “Internet Plus”; it will also certainly tap new growth points in the rural economy. So support for infrastructure construction in rural areas must be increased, the informatization transformation of rural traditional distribution networks must be accelerated, and e-commerce platforms for agricultural production materials must be built. This is both a practical need for raising farmers' living standards and developing modern agriculture, and an inevitable requirement of the development of the times.