Government officials in Jiangxi help poverty alleviation through livestreaming e-commerce

By Zhu Lei, People’s Daily

Chen Weifeng, deputy chief of Tonggu county, Yichun City of Jiangxi in eastern China’s province of Jiangxi, recently turned into a livestream host promoting local specialties that encountered poor sales due to the COVID-19 epidemic.

The newbie broadcaster hosted a livestream show on March 15 during which he made local food and helped sell free-range eggs for local impoverished households.

“The eggs are sold out, but a presale would be launched this afternoon,” Chen said during the livestreaming session. The deputy county chief secured a great performance on the show.

He was joined by local Hakka women who grouped in pairs or threes to advertise the specialties. On the livestream show, they held prize draws, presented special offers and staged art performances. Besides, they also cooked local food including fried eggs and fired bamboo shoots, as well as presented tea culture performance.

The livestream show offered joy for the viewers during which they also had a better knowledge of Tonggu.

The effort was part of a poverty-relief activity launched by Jiangxi province on March 15 that encouraged senior officials of Party committees and governments at all levels to advertise local specialties on livestream platforms such as Taobao Live and Kuaishou. Internet media platforms including Douyin, Weibo and Ixigua also joined the activity to promote sales of agricultural products and expand sales channels for the farmers.

“We sold all 10,000 eggs, 3,000 kilograms of rice noodles, 500 kilograms of honey, and 1,000 packages of smoked bamboo shoots. Meanwhile, we also received over 300 orders of other local specialties such as chrysanthemum tea, tea seed oil and candied fruit,” said Chen, who was quite satisfied with the 324,200-yuan ($45,873) sales performance.

Tonggu isn’t the only place that benefits from the livestreaming commerce. Chishan township in Shangli county received over 100 orders of chrysanthemum tea in just 10 minutes, while Guangxin district of Shangrao sold nearly 1,000 packages of tea products in dozens of minutes. Besides, the pomelos and tofu skins presented by Ji’an were liked 1.9 million times.

Just in a day, the poverty alleviation livestreaming activity was watched by 26.9 million people. Exhibiting 567 products, it achieved a turnover of 7.5 million yuan and benefited 43,000 impoverished people.

The sudden outbreak of COVID-19 impacted the sales of agricultural products, which led to a shrinkage of farmers’ income. To address the poor sales of these products, Jiangxi Poverty Alleviation Office, together with other 9 related unites issued an action plan to help poverty alleviation through consumption. It encouraged the integration of poverty-alleviation products and online platforms, aiming to increase income for impoverished villages and households, and contribute to the eradication of poverty.

According to Lu Wenge, deputy head of Jiangxi Poverty Alleviation Office, the livestream offered an access for the people to cost-efficient products. He said Jiangxi will later turn it into a routine practice and a great channel for poverty-alleviation products. He believes any product can benefit the impoverished, and hopes such activity will increase the income of impoverished households and mitigate the losses in the epidemic.

Jiangxi has always let development programs play a fundamental role in poverty alleviation. By adopting the poverty alleviation approach of fostering distinctive industries, advancing relocation, carrying out ecological restoration, strengthening education, and improving social security, the province encourages village cadres and local big names to initiate development programs, and calls on Party members, villagers and impoverished households to join them. Besides, it has also enhanced the leading role of agricultural cooperatives and improved the mechanism of integrating farmers' interests into agricultural industry chains.

Among all the 806,000 registered impoverished households, 733,000, or 90.9 percent have benefited from development programs, and each of them see an annual increase of income of 3,100 yuan.

By March 12, Jiangxi has designated 1,982 poverty-alleviation products and 1,303 suppliers which cover all 95 counties, prefectures and districts with poverty alleviation tasks.

A TV host from the TV station of Xingan county, Ji’an, Jiangxi province livestreams an interview with Huang Shaoming, a potato planter in Luojiaxiang village, Jiebu township, to help him sell potatoes online, March 18. Photo by Li Fusun, People’s Daily Online