Rural e-commerce training must not stop at armchair theorizing

As the "mass entrepreneurship and innovation" boom sweeps across the country, localities have been rolling out free rural e-commerce training. Yet when reporters recently visited some counties and districts in Ningxia, they found that e-commerce training for rural areas and farmers needs more and more targeted hands-on practice, but in some places the emphasis on "concept"-style training has greatly diminished the results.

Huang Lixin, 48, is a farmer in Ningxia who has been recovering at home since a traffic accident last year. This year, Huang Lixin attended a local rural e-commerce training class. Although he gained a rough understanding of e-commerce, he could not produce a single clear product photo. Some online "advertisements" that only require a franchise fee, offer full hosting of the online store and let you sit back and collect money greatly tempted Huang Lixin; he had even prepared to take out 15,000 yuan in savings to join a franchise.

Huang Lixin's experience is just a microcosm. It is understood that most of the counties and districts in Ningxia that carry out rural e-commerce training rely on e-commerce incubation centers and training centers, and through government purchase of services, local Ningxia e-commerce companies conduct the training on their behalf. The training classes are divided into beginner classes, advanced classes and so on. But these courses can only give the farmers taking part a general awareness of e-commerce.

For farmers, an investment of a few thousand yuan in e-commerce may not seem like much, but it is hard-earned money they have saved by skimping on food and clothing. If the training is not practical, online stores opened by farmers on sheer enthusiasm can easily fail; while suffering losses, they will also lose a great deal of confidence in rural e-commerce. If they are deceived by lawbreakers online, some families may well be pushed into poverty as a result.

Rural e-commerce training must be judged by actual results. It should shift from focusing on the number of people trained to focusing on the e-commerce "survival rate", put actual results in a prominent position in evaluation, and concentrate on cultivating e-commerce leaders who are savvy and capable. This requires rural e-commerce training to start from farmers' actual needs, strictly screen trainees, and improve training methods, rather than making farmers feel that things are "profound" with new terms such as "Internet Plus" and "big data".

For rural e-commerce training, training institutions with rich marketing experience and strong capabilities can be selected so that trainees have more opportunities for practice, rather than using only lectures, "brainstorming" and other "armchair theorizing" teaching methods. A mechanism for evaluating and giving feedback on training results should also be established. This will not only help training institutions sum up in time, but also help government departments help farmers choose suitable training institutions.