E-commerce raises incomes and optimism in far west

Lying to the south of the Tianshan Mountains and north of the Tarim Basin, a huge depression covering about 400,000 square kilometers, Aksu, which means "clean water" in the Uygur language, covers 130,000 sq km.

Aksu is home to 2.8 million people, 83 percent of whom are members of the Uygur ethnic group, and its northwestern extremity shares a combined 235-km border with Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan.

The local environment makes the prefecture the perfect place to grow high-quality apples, pears, apricots, walnuts and red dates. However, the remote location and poor transportation and distribution networks have traditionally hampered sales of agricultural produce and kept local incomes low.

Given this backdrop, selling the produce via online platforms and developing e-commerce is an efficient way for local people to clear their stocks and lift themselves out of poverty.

Last year, to help the development of e-commerce, the prefectural government allocated each county 1 million yuan to 3 million yuan.

The Aksu E-commerce Industrial Park, built in the downtown in 2015 with support from the Hangzhou government, is home to the Aksu E-commerce Association, a number of logistics enterprises and the offices and warehouses of several online stores.