The report, published by AliResearch, Alibaba Group’s research arm, underlines the potential of ecommerce on the local market to boost economic activity in the poorer, largely agrarian regions, where nearly 50% of China’s population resides.
A Taobao Village is a cluster of rural e-tailers where at least 10% of village households are involved in ecommerce or at least 100 online shops have been opened by villagers; and total annual ecommerce transaction volume in the village is at least CNY 10 million (USD 1.6 million). Currently, there are 70,000 Taobao Village merchants selling products on Alibaba Group-owned Taobao marketplace, China’s shopping website, the same source indicates. That’s up from 15,000 sellers at the end of 2013. Also, commercial activity surrounding ecommerce provided 280,000 job opportunities in rural China in 2014, as compared with 60,000 jobs in 2013.
According to the AliResearch report, there are Taobao Villages in 10 provinces. The coastal provinces of Zhejiang, Guangdong, Fujian, Hebei and Jiangsu accounted for more than 90 percent of the total number of Taobao Villages. Also, four villages in the midwestern provinces of Sichuan, Henan and Hubei made the AliResearch list in 2014.
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