URUMQI, May 16 (Xinhua) -- Compared with depressed brick-and-mortar shops, Zhang Wei's online shop has been particularly busy during the epidemic period. He has to work day and night to complete a mountain of orders.
Zhang lives in Jinghe County, a remote county in northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region.
The country's economy has been affected by the COVID-19 epidemic, however, the rural economy has shown its great potential during the difficult times. With the rapid development of digital technologies in China's vast rural areas, rural residents' life has been changed significantly. Jinghe, located at the southwestern edge of the Junggar Basin in Xinjiang, is among them.
The small county became a demonstration county of e-commerce early in 2016. Zhang, who has experience in the field, established an e-commerce company at that time and took the lead to develop e-commerce, selling local agricultural products including wolfberry to customers nationwide.
Zhang also cooperated with local e-commerce companies, providing free training for neighboring counties and towns.
"The epidemic is both a challenge and an opportunity for the development of rural e-commerce," the 24-year-old man said.
In the past, e-commerce companies need to purchase agricultural products from local farmers and organize training. However, farmers have now become more active in cooperating with e-commerce companies to ask for more online training.
As a traditional farming and animal husbandry county, Jinghe is also exploring new models through online e-commerce platforms to help local residents shake off poverty.
"E-commerce is a key method to promote consumption and poverty relief. Many village officials and farmers also find opportunities on livestreaming, and some become livestreamers selling their farm produce online," said Ma Shujun, director of the e-commerce office of Jinghe.
Wang Jie, a local resident and an agricultural product wholesaler, has seen her online orders double over the past few months. She said that she not only uses the Internet to sell products but also as a consumer on various e-commerce platforms. She wants to buy a new mobile phone for her son to have online classes and plans to buy furniture and lighting for her new home online.
Statistics showed that online consumption in Jinghe has increased significantly since the beginning of this year. Both urban residents and villagers bought more medium and high-end products than before.
The great changes that happened in Jinghe are the epitome of the rapid development of the Internet economy in Xinjiang.
Official data showed the online retail sales of goods in the whole region reached 6.49 billion yuan (about 914 million U.S. dollars) in the first quarter, up 25.46 percent year on year. Enditem
