As China is a successful pioneer of rural e-commerce, its experience can shed light on how to effectively integrate agriculture into e-commerce, which can reduce poverty and foster rural development. The following recommendations are thus concluded to better orientate developing countries in the development of rural e-commerce.

1. As ICT infrastructure is essential for building e-commerce and infrastructure for logistics, more investment in these areas should be encouraged under innovation frameworks such as Public-Private Partnership.

2. Strategies and policies always provide strong support for rural e-commerce development from the government perspective. Smallholder entrepreneurs could benefit from a normative policy system with combined measures and initiatives from national, provincial, municipal, and county-level governments, which also can incentivize local entrepreneurs to develop innovative business models in e-commerce.

3. Fostering entrepreneurship with large-scale impact in the e-commerce field is expected. Leading entrepreneurs not only provide a good model for others but can also share the responsibility of industry management with government, which could contribute to better establishment at the beginning as well as better long-term development of rural e-commerce. They also would like to facilitatefurther coordination between governments and markets.

4. More training and support to local farmers in developing countries for e-literacy and e-marketing skills are required to foster rural entrepreneurship by better engaging local farmers in connection with their customers through e-commerce.

5. Investment in knowledge production and sharing, especially documentation of lessons learned, could facilitate adoption of good practices to develop e-commerce as adjusted to particular national or local contexts. Knowledgesharing initiatives under South-South cooperation help disseminate learnings from the successful e-commerce experience of developing countries such as China to other developing countries.

Related references:

1. Good Practices on E-commerce for Rural Value Chain Development

http://www.wfpchinacoe.net/2022-09/20/content_78429224.shtml

2. Summary of the Chinese Government ICT Agricultural Reform (2015-2019)

http://www.wfpchinacoe.net/2022-09/20/content_78429338.shtml

3. Policies Related to E-commerce Issued by the Chinese Government (2017-2019)

http://www.wfpchinacoe.net/2022-09/20/content_78429441.shtml