The Ministry of Commerce will vigorously promote rural e-commerce development this year

"The Ministry of Commerce will invest considerable effort this year to advance the development of rural e-commerce, mainly by continuing to promote e-commerce into rural areas." Shen Danyang, spokesperson for the Ministry of Commerce, said this at a press conference held by the Ministry on the morning of the 17th.

E-commerce has driven a situation of "mass entrepreneurship and innovation," and with the continuous integration and development of online and offline channels, the pace of traditional enterprises transforming toward "Internet Plus" has clearly accelerated.

Facing the new situation, Shen Danyang said that this year the Ministry of Commerce will launch a new special e-commerce action plan, the core of which is to regulate and promote e-commerce development, including four specific tasks: first, improving laws, regulations and standards; second, promoting e-commerce applications in small and medium-sized cities; third, advancing rural and agricultural product e-commerce; fourth, intensifying efforts to prevent infringement and counterfeiting.

Since last year, the Ministry of Commerce, together with the Ministry of Finance, has carried out this comprehensive demonstration work in 8 provinces and 56 counties including Hebei, Henan and Hubei. On the one hand, it has pushed large e-commerce companies such as Alibaba, JD.com and Suning and many express delivery companies to expand into rural markets; on the other hand, it has encouraged traditional physical enterprises such as supply and marketing cooperatives and postal services to actively experiment with integrated online-offline development in rural areas.

Shen Danyang introduced that at present there are roughly more than 3,000 agriculture-related websites nationwide, and 24 provinces and cities and 31 prefectures and counties have set up "special pavilions" on the Alibaba platform. On Taobao, there are 1.63 million online stores registered in townships and administrative villages, nearly 400,000 online stores dealing in agricultural products, 212 various Taobao villages have appeared in places such as Hebei, Zhejiang, Jiangsu and Shandong, online retail sales of agricultural products have reached more than 100 billion yuan, and in Zhejiang Province alone the group of rural youth starting businesses online has reached more than 1 million people.

Shen Danyang pointed out that according to the requirements set out in this year's No. 1 Central Document on implementing e-commerce into rural areas, the Ministry of Commerce is currently working with relevant departments to study and formulate guiding opinions on accelerating the development of rural e-commerce, focusing on four aspects: carrying out informatization upgrades of traditional rural distribution networks, building e-commerce platforms for agricultural production materials, developing agricultural product e-commerce, and expanding the scope of rural e-commerce services. "It is hoped that through these measures, more rural areas will come alive because of e-commerce, and more farmers will become prosperous because of e-commerce."