Rural E-commerce Poverty Alleviation: Roles and Outcomes

E-commerce has been playing a vital role in many countries’ economic development and it has significantly changed the way how people lived. In China E-commerce not only has economic significance but also social significance as E-commerce is seen as an important strategy in China's poverty alleviation. This paper introduces the background, major characteristics of poverty alleviation strategies during different development stages, and the overall outcomes that have been yielded by these strategies in poverty alleviation through comparing the changes in number of people under poverty, poverty standard and poverty incidence over the past a few decades. The paper also elaborates the overall development of E-commerce in China especially development of rural E-commerce in rural areas and the roles it plays in rural poverty alleviation. In the light of the roles and outcomes of rural E-commerce the paper examines the realistic basis and feasibility to develop rural E-commerce as a significant strategy to fight against rural poverty from the perspective of internet user scale, online retailing scale, rural E-commerce markets, rural E-commerce infrastructure, online payment accessibility, etc. Although China declared a “complete victory” in the fight against poverty in 2021 rural E-commerce has huge development room in the post poverty alleviation era. In addition, there are still various factors restricting its further development and measures need to be taken to improve and perfect its further development. Based on the current development of rural E-commerce in poverty alleviation this paper proposes some suggestions on rural E-commerce development hoping to provide experience and enlightenment for rural E-commerce development in the post poverty alleviation era.