Chart of the Day: Rural Online Retail Grows

Online retail sales across China’s rural areas grew 10.5% last year on the back of a push to extend e-commerce into impoverished villages.

People in rural areas bought 1.37 trillion yuan ($200 billion) worth of goods online last year, 15% of the 9 trillion yuan-worth sold around the country (link in Chinese).

China had 576.6 million rural residents at the end of 2017, accounting for 41% of the total population, according to the National Bureau of Statistics.

Meanwhile total online sales across China surged 23.9% for the year, the Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM) said last Thursday (link in Chinese).

On the other side of the equation, a total of 238 impoverished counties — roughly a third of China’s impoverished counties by the official count — were added to a government scheme to help sell their produce online last year, according to MOFCOM.

Online sales of agricultural products went up 33.8% year-on-year to 230.5 billion yuan, though it was unclear what proportion of this growth could be attributed to the government scheme.

The yearly online rural e-commerce growth figure of 10.5% was calculated by Caixin based on historical data from MOFCOM.

Contact reporter Tang Ziyi (ziyitang@caixin.com)