Shopping online proves a boon for rural residents
Print Edition
Every day at 8am, Wang Kexin puts on his helmet and leg guards and hops on a motorcycle to start work.
The 31-year-old goes door to door through villages in Maolin Township in northeast China’s Jilin Province to deliver goods purchased online.
Wang is among scores of rural couriers providing door-to-door service in areas where a lack of roads makes mass delivery unfeasible.
“If we didn’t deliver the goods, those living in remote villages would have to go a long way to fetch their parcels in town, which is troublesome and time-consuming,” Wang said.
E-commerce is booming in China, with the online retail trade volume increasing 49.7 percent year on year to 2.8 trillion yuan (US$450 billion) last year. The popularity of online shopping is expanding to the countryside, and one estimate values the rural online market at 460 billion yuan by next year.
Wang has a delivery route that covers about 140 kilometers and it can take him eight to nine hours to deliver around 30 parcels to Maolin residents.
The service is extremely popular among villagers.
“I do a lot of online shopping for myself and my unborn baby,” said Maolin resident Li Yue. “If it were not for Wang, I would have a lot of trouble getting all these things home.”
Courier companies are expanding their businesses to take advantage of the huge potential market.
In October, Alibaba announced a plan to build 1,000 county-level operation centers and 100,000 village-level service stations.
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