China witnesses rural e-commerce boom: AliResearch report

HANGZHOU - China has witnessed a boom of rural e-commerce with 780 villages each having online shopping transactions exceeding 10 million yuan ($1.5 million) in 2015, according to a report released by Alibaba.

AliResearch, the research arm of the Alibaba Group, issued the report on Tuesday saying that this was a surge of 268 percent year on year.

E-commerce prosperous villages are called "Taobao villages," as business is mainly conducted via Alibaba's trading platform Taobao. In addition to the transaction volume, a Taobao village should have more than 100 businesses, or at least 10 percent of households involved in e-commerce, according to AliResearch.

The 780 Taobao villages are located in 17 Chinese provinces and regions with Zhejiang, Guangdong and Jiangsu provinces having the most.

AliResearch found that rural e-commerce business clusters are taking shape in these coastal regions, where Taobao villages are modernizing thanks to encouragement from their local governments.

This year also saw the emergence of rural e-commerce in the northeastern, mid- and western provinces and regions of Hunan, Yunnan, Jilin, Liaoning and Ningxia, where Taobao villages appeared for the first time. Among them, 176 Taobao villages are in impoverished regions.