E-commerce Livestreaming Improves Lives in Longnan

Abstract

In 2011, more than 1.3 million people, or 53% of its population in Longnan City, Gansu Province, were impoverished. The city had three designations at the time: It was the most impoverished of 14 cities and prefectures in Gansu; it had the greatest number of poverty-stricken residents among the 18 cities in the extremely impoverished Qinling-Bashan Mountains region; and its urban district and 8 counties were all nationally recognized poverty-stricken administrative areas.

Although Longnan produces more than 1,000 types of precious medicinal materials and over 100 valuable mountainous plants, many of its inhabitants were unable to escape from poverty before they began using livestreaming technology to market them and other specialty products on e-commerce platforms. The efforts that the government and the city's residents have made have resulted in its e-commerce industry becoming well-established and its poverty reduction model, which has become known as the Longnan model, setting a good example of how to eradicate poverty in China's mountainous areas.

Creating a way for persons with disabilities to escape from poverty

Thirty-one-year-old livestreaming host Shi Zaohua promotes agricultural products on an e-commerce platform in Longnan City, Gansu Province. (Photo by Jia Yuhong)

"Hello," 31-year-old Longnan-based e-commerce participant Shi Zaohua greeted some viewers one morning in 2021. "I am called Xiao Shitou (a nickname meaning "Little Hard Stone"). Welcome to my livestream. Another beautiful day has begun. Let's take a look at this delicate handmade basket. It was hand woven by some of my friends with disabilities. You can click on the purchase button to add it to your shopping cart if you want to buy it."

Shi and the rest of the team at the workshop that she works at have sold characteristic local products to buyers all over China using livestreaming technology and have become well-known in Longnan's Wudu District.

In 2013, the Longnan native became partially paralyzed and wheelchair-bound as a result of a car accident. In 2018, Du Guiying, head of Wudu's Kangrui Agricultural Cooperative, met Shi and encouraged her to get involved with e-commerce and become a member of the cooperative. She did so, became proficient with e-commerce operations in less than a year, and has continued to develop and perfect her skills.

In 2019, Kangrui established a poverty alleviation workshop. Twenty-five persons with disabilities are members of the cooperative as of late 2021, 20 of whom make bamboo baskets, dustpans, and other handmade products at the facility, and 5 of whom sell them online.

The workshop, along with Longnan's other poverty alleviation workshops, has been receiving increasing numbers of orders as e-commerce has developed in the city. Every morning, Shi and her team market Chinese red peppers, Astragalus membranaceus (an herb used in many formulations in traditional Chinese medicine), olive oil, honey, knitted handcrafts, and other characteristic local products to potential buyers in nearly every part of China on video platforms such as Kuaishou (a Chinese short video platform), Douyin (the Chinese version of TikTok), and video-oriented WeChat mini programs.

Shi discusses marketing techniques with her supervisor at the Kangrui Agricultural Cooperative's poverty alleviation workshop. (Photo by Jia Yuhong)

"We receive about 20-30 orders for woven goods produced by the workshop on online sales platforms every day," Shi mentioned joyfully in late 2021.

The people who work at Kangrui's poverty alleviation workshop were earning an average of RMB2,000-3,000 a month at this time. Everyone has been experiencing the satisfaction of increasing their incomes through their own efforts and is optimistic about the future.

During the COVID-19 outbreak in 2020, Shi and her team used e-commerce-oriented WeChat mini programs and arranged for contactless deliveries to communities and logged RMB660,000 of sales in just two months. Shi's team also sold more than RMB320,000's worth of agricultural products and woven baskets online and through traditional sales channels during a 20-day food festival that Wudu held that year from late May to mid-June.

The Longnan Model

Shi and countless other people have left poverty behind and become more prosperous by engaging in e-commerce livestreaming in Longnan.

Located near the junction of Gansu, Sichuan, and Shaanxi provinces, Longnan was part of the contiguous impoverished area that existed in the Qinling-Bashan Mountains region until 2020. The ancient Shu (now called Sichuan) Road, which is known for its precipitousness, runs through the city and is an example of the inconvenient transportation that has stifled economic development in the area for a long while in addition to the limited flows of information that it suffered from. A typical representative of overall regional poverty in China, Longnan was also one of the poorest places in Gansu and the entire country before it emerged from poverty.

The city's unique climatic conditions enable it to produce more than 1,000 types of precious medicinal materials and over 100 valuable mountainous plants, such as walnuts, Chinese red peppers and olives, but these high-quality agricultural products were unable to bring prosperity to the area due to the high cost of transporting them. Local government, therefore, set to work developing measures that could help unlock the value of the agricultural products produced in the city.

In 2013, Longnan's Chengxian County began marketing its walnuts online. Shoppers reacted positively to the initiative and the products unexpectedly developed a reputation for possessing high quality at relatively reasonable prices.

At the end of the year, the city became determined to pursue and develop e-commerce as a means of reducing poverty after it finished conducting in-depth research and analysis and proposed "representing its vast real-life rivers and mountains online in cyberspace."

Longnan has been creating an integrated e-commerce system that benefits impoverished households and other parties that includes a municipal e-commerce development bureau, county-level e-commerce service centers, township-level e-commerce service stations, and village-level e-commerce service points since 2013. Guidance, agricultural exhibition and sales, entrepreneurial incubation, brand operation, logistics, distribution, e-commerce training, and other convenient services are provided so that poverty-stricken people can become more prosperous by engaging in e-commerce.

A diagram depicting Longnan’s integrated e-commerce service system framework

From 2013 to 2020, Longnan issued a total of 47 e-commerce-related policy documents pertaining to the administrative service organizations that have gradually been established in its district and counties in order to provide comprehensive support for the development of its e-commerce industry.

The city has made great efforts to improve services that support e-commerce in order to help every aspect of the undertaking flourish and develop. Every year, substantial amounts of funding are invested in the construction of urban and rural infrastructure, and a rural broadband network subsidy project was implemented. More than 95% of the city’s administrative villages have access to broadband internet and infrastructure projects related to every link of the rural e-commerce industry chain have been completed as of late 2021.

Longnan's E-commerce Development Bureau has developed close cooperative relationships with mainstream domestic e-commerce platforms, such as Alibaba, Tencent, JD.com, and Pinduoduo.com, which has led to the creation of plenty of sales channels, and the organizations' cross-border commerce, livestreaming, and intercity delivery capabilities have enabled Longnan's agricultural products to make their way to the tables of countless households all over China.

Logistics being a key aspect of e-commerce, the city has developed relationships with SF Express, Deppon Express, and other well-known national logistics enterprises as well, and they have established facilities in its borders. Local express and "grassroots logistics" companies developed by entrepreneurial youth have also rapidly emerged. A total of 1,045 express logistics service stations have been established in Longnan and cover the vast majority of its administrative villages as of late 2021.

Additionally, Longnan launched the first E-commerce Vocational College in northwest China. More than 250,000 people have been trained through the school in conjunction with e-commerce training institutions within and outside of the city and leading local e-commerce enterprises as of the end of 2021.

E-commerce development has stimulated agriculture, processing, packaging, warehousing, logistics, and other related industries in Longnan. The city has effectively leveraged its resources and turned them into industrial advantages that promote employment, boost rural residents' incomes, and methodically advance targeted poverty alleviation.

The city's e-commerce-driven poverty alleviation model has been refined and perfected as a result of the relentless efforts that have been made. The government provides leadership and prioritizes the provision of sufficient operational support rather than strict supervision, and an enterprise-based industrial chain has emerged that encourages mass entrepreneurship. Locals have been widely mobilized, relevant services have been provided, multi-lateral cooperation has been occurring, and local products have been effectively marketed on online platforms.

The model has become ingrained in the hearts of Longnan's residents, and an atmosphere in which "anything can be livestreamed, and anyone can be a livestreaming host" has been taking shape. The total number of online stores in the city stood at a stable 14,000 at the end of 2021. They achieved RMB5.21 billion of total revenue that year, including RMB99.97 million during the Double Eleven shopping festival period (an online shopping event on and around November 11) and RMB205 million during Double Twelve (a similar event on and around December 12), and more than RMB27 billion of cumulative sales have been logged since the endeavor began. Sales of agaric, Chinese red pepper, colleseed oil, materials used in traditional Chinese medicine, honey, and other high-quality agricultural products have been booming in the city, and Longnan's residents have participated in 87 e-commerce training sessions a total of 11,219 times as of late 2021. E-commerce-powered poverty alleviation endeavors have put more money in participants' pockets and enabled them to achieve the lifestyle improvements that they have longed for.

For more information, please contact WFP China COE (wfpcn.coe@wfp.org)