E-commerce injects vitality into rural development in China (2)

Two years ago, Zhang Haiyang from Anhui moved to Qingyanliu to run an online shop selling daily necessities. He told Xinhua that the village boasted the nation's lowest cost for express services and professional homepage designers for online startups.
Qingyanliu is a showcase of e-commerce development in China's rural areas. Official statistics show that in 2009 rural Internet users numbered more than 100 million throughout the country, an increase of 26.25 percent year on year. Between 2007 and 2009, the annual growth rate for rural Internet users averaged 71.6 percent, much higher than the 34.6 percent rate for urban Internet users.
Apart from population growth, rural online shop operators have expanded their business scope from farm produce to industrial products, which they committed local workshops to process.
In the northern county of Qinghe, China's largest cashmere spinning base, local villagers began to launch online shops to sell cashmere yarn beginning at the end of 2007. At Donggaozhuang village of Qinghe, there are 400 households running 400 registered online brands, with over 20 online shops each reporting at least 1 million yuan in annual sales income.
In Suining, an impoverished county of Xuzhou City, eastern China's Jiangsu Province, several young villagers from Shaji town succeeded in selling simple furniture in online shops in 2006. More local residents have since followed suit and expanded businesses to include sale of computers and small hardware pieces, as well as repairing PCs.
There are now 600 online business people running approximately 1,000 online shops in Shaji town. Among them are college graduates and owners of groceries and small supermarkets. Their suppliers include over 180 furniture producers, ranging from traditional household workshops to modern factories.
In 2010, online shops in Shaji recorded 300 million yuan in sales income.