Online Markets Key to China's Rural Growth

China will step up efforts to promote the online sales of agricultural products as part of its broadplan to leverage e-commerce to alleviate property in rural areas, senior officials said on Friday.

Wang Bingnan, assistant minster of commerce, said at a news conference that the ministry willintegrate resources from telecommunications, transportation and postal departments to help ruralresidents better sell farm produce online.

The State Council called on Wednesday for joint efforts from governments and enterprises toaccelerate the development of rural e-commerce.

Wang said that enhancing rural regions' abilities to upgrade their infrastructure facilities andmarket access channels is on top of the ministry's agenda.

To achieve the goal, the ministry will partner with the State Post Bureau to encourage e-commerce companies and express delivery firms to expand into rural regions to directly linkfarmers with consumers, reducing the role of middlemen.

Ma Junsheng, director-general of the State Post Bureau, said online shopping platforms can helpquality agricultural products reach more consumers with greater efficiency and lower cost.

He cited the example of selling crabs online. "China's annual output of crabs is 20,000 metrictons, and now over 50 percent of them are sold online where each crab only costs 15 yuan($2.40), far lower than the price at brick-and-mortar stores," Ma said.

Currently, rural e-commerce is developing rapidly in China's eastern coastal regions, but lessdeveloped inland areas are still facing obstacles, including lack of access to the Internet and theshortage of skilled workers.

Data from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology show that among the 50,000villages that have no access to the Internet, 98 percent of the mare located in China's middle andwestern provinces.

To fix this problem, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology announced onWednesday an investment of 140 billion yuan to upgrade...