Zhenping county: Fighting poverty with consumer demand and compassion

Nanyang's Zhenping county has setup an online shop for their local agricultural products via a big data e-commerce platform, just in time to meet the demands of the Chinese New Year shopping rush.

This is the first time that the county has experimented with e-commerce and Spring Festival consumer demand to combat poverty, and it seems to be working.

A shopping festival themed with such keywords as 'spring festival', 'poverty alleviation', and 'e-commerce' kicked off to great aplomb in Zhenping on Feb 3, as buyers rushed to buy products they needed while simultaneously helping out the less fortunate.

"Consuming to support the poor is a strategy that we've been using to make breakthroughs in alleviating rural poverty, and to also create rural-urban consumption supply chains", said county Party chief Li Xianqing. 

Local officials attend the opening of the Zhenping shopping festival on Feb 3, 2018. [Photo/ zhenping.gov.cn]

Zhenping in Central China's Henan province is among the nation's most poverty-stricken counties. The big data e-commerce platform that supports the festival is provided by a government-owned enterprise dedicated to poverty alleviation.

Roast chicken, huangjiu (yellow rice wine), sweet potato powder, honey, mushrooms and hundreds of other agricultural products were listed for sale both online and offline at the event. These products were all sourced from less well-off and poverty stricken households, family farms and specialized farmer cooperatives that needed the extra income.

Hosted by the county's big data service center, the festival has attracted quite a bit of interest. "I've arrived here early in the morning to buy some food for my parents," said local citizen Zhang Lingjuan, who've just bought a bunch of lotus roots from Zhanglin town's product booth. The farmer who owned the lotus roots, Yao Mingbao, went on to sell out all 1,500 kilograms in just 2 hours.

Consumers line up to buy produce and fight poverty. [Photo/ zhenping.gov.cn]

Song Lei, a resident, thinks the fair is a great deal for both sides, saying "I contribute to alleviating poverty while receiving fresh produce in return."

By 6 pm of the opening day, the online platform had already received 110,080 online orders, worth around 10.2 million yuan ($1.59 million).

Zhang Yanhao, the manager of Zhenping's big data e-commerce platform said, "We will further analyze consumer trends and sales patterns so that farmers will be able to base their production on statistical indicators. We believe it will be a great boost for rural poverty alleviation."   

The shopping festival kicks off at the county's big data service center on Feb 3, 2018. [Photo/ zhenping.gov.cn]