Internet plays a role in China’s poverty alleviation
By Gu Yekai, People’s Daily
The rapid development of the Internet in China has not only unleashed huge
digital dividends, but also opened up a fast track for poverty alleviation.
Gaibao village in Liping county, southwest China's Guizhou province is a
beneficiary of the Internet. After videos of its picturesque natural landscape
and distinctive folk culture went viral on short-video platforms, the village
started to cash in on a tourism boom as a rising tide of visitors flooded in.
The advantages of the Internet lie in unbounded information, inclusiveness
and sharing. Even poor rural areas can be closely connected with the Internet.
A network cable and a signal tower could connect agricultural products
deep in the mountains to dining tables in the city, and enable urban residents
to receive more stories about rural life.
Yinan county, located in the hinterland of the Yimeng mountains in east
China's Shandong Province, had difficulty in selling agricultural products to
the outside world because it is landlocked and had insufficient access to
relevant information.
In a new round of targeted poverty alleviation, Yinan adopted e-commerce
as a poverty alleviation tool, establishing e-commerce service stations in
impoverished villages and connecting farmers with manufacturing companies and
e-commerce platforms. Under these efforts, the county's high-quality and
distinctive industries have achieved further development.
Thanks to the e-commerce service stations, the price of peaches doubled. “On
average, a peach can be sold for 10 yuan,” said a local farmer named Liu
Yuanqiang.
In the first half of this year, online retail sales in China's rural areas
reached 777.13 billion yuan, up 21%year-on-year. Online retail sales of
agricultural products amounted to 187.36 billion yuan, with a year-on-year
increase of 25.3%. In the same period, online retail sales in poverty-stricken
counties in China reached 65.98 billion yuan, up 18% year-on-year.
The country's efforts to reduce poverty through e-commerce are paying off
as great potential has been unleashed in rural e-commerce and online retailing
grows rapidly.
The Internet also bridges digital divide and ensures equal access to
sources of information. Through the Internet, children in poor areas can
receive an education of higher quality, and farmers can learn the latest
techniques. This is a way to compose internal driving forces for sustained
development .
Currently, close to 100 million rural Chinese students in primary and
middle schools are covered by a national satellite broadband transmission
network for online education.
About 64,000 schools across the country are equipped with digital
educational resources, benefiting nearly 4 million students in remote and poor
regions who do not have access to proper education due to teacher shortages.
In recent years, the construction of information infrastructure in rural
areas in China has picked up pace. In some poor areas, telecom operators have
launched exclusive packages at discounted prices. Such measures provide network
guarantee for poverty alleviation in these areas.
There is a rule in the Internet age: those having easier access to
information can usually get themselves out of poverty faster. It is believed
that once every corner of urban and rural areas is connected by the Internet,
there will be more and more beneficiaries like Gaibao village.
Internet plays a role in China’s poverty alleviation
Reviewed by PEOPLES MAIL
on
13:09
Rating:
No comments: