How E-Commerce Is Transforming Rural China(newyorker.com)
newyorker.com
How E-Commerce Is Transforming Rural China
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/07/23/how-e-commerce-is-transforming-rural-china
13 comments
What do you think is exaggerated or sensational? It sounds like you wanted to read a different article about something else.
It seems to me that this article is mostly about technological and social changes as seen by people from small villages. Since the author was born in China and grew up in a small village, this is the ideal person to talk to others and tell their stories.
It seems to me that this article is mostly about technological and social changes as seen by people from small villages. Since the author was born in China and grew up in a small village, this is the ideal person to talk to others and tell their stories.
The part about JD.com's business and ground level operations are very informative and interesting to read, props to the author.
But on the other hand, details of personal stories of various characters in the article made me grumbling "Really?! Is this from the New Yorker?".
Just one example, in the story about her parents sending her to stay with relatives in an extremely poor village before they left China for the US, the author wrote, "I wouldn’t see meat for three months;" and "that hunger could feel like a demon clawing at your stomach. ".
Come on, that was in 1992 when China had already got into economic reform for fourteen years(starting in 1978). Not matter how remote the village is, three months without meat for the daughter of your powerful relative? To make things even less believable, don't forget her mother was a doctor at an Army hospital in a big city, that's absolutely in the upper echelon in China financially in the 1980s. It's probably comparable to a $300K/year doctor in the US today relative to the rest of population, not to mention how few Chinese had the means and connections to immigrate (not merely visit) to US in that period of time, so how can you not be shocked to read that her parents would let their daughter go hungry and have no meat for three months?
These and some other passages made me enjoy a lot less of the article. I don't blame her because first the country and the people have gone through dramatic changes since she came to the states, and secondly even the New Yorker has to make things attractive to the mass in order to sell.
But on the other hand, details of personal stories of various characters in the article made me grumbling "Really?! Is this from the New Yorker?".
Just one example, in the story about her parents sending her to stay with relatives in an extremely poor village before they left China for the US, the author wrote, "I wouldn’t see meat for three months;" and "that hunger could feel like a demon clawing at your stomach. ".
Come on, that was in 1992 when China had already got into economic reform for fourteen years(starting in 1978). Not matter how remote the village is, three months without meat for the daughter of your powerful relative? To make things even less believable, don't forget her mother was a doctor at an Army hospital in a big city, that's absolutely in the upper echelon in China financially in the 1980s. It's probably comparable to a $300K/year doctor in the US today relative to the rest of population, not to mention how few Chinese had the means and connections to immigrate (not merely visit) to US in that period of time, so how can you not be shocked to read that her parents would let their daughter go hungry and have no meat for three months?
These and some other passages made me enjoy a lot less of the article. I don't blame her because first the country and the people have gone through dramatic changes since she came to the states, and secondly even the New Yorker has to make things attractive to the mass in order to sell.
Of course memories can be fuzzy and reporters do sometimes exaggerate or get things wrong. Also, I certainly don't know one way or another (never been to China). But you seem overly confident making indirect inferences by analogy about what happened in a small village somewhere in China 25 years ago. The world isn't that neat and tidy.
>To make things even less believable, don't forget her mother was a doctor at an Army hospital in a big city, that's absolutely in the upper echelon in China financially in the 1980s.
Have you considered that the whole village may not have had meat? Well, meat was hard to come by even in megacities
Have you considered that the whole village may not have had meat? Well, meat was hard to come by even in megacities
The author grew up in a major city (Chongqing) before emigrating to the US but her dad grew up in a small village and she had some experience staying with relatives there. I felt that the writing is somewhat stilted as well even though I appreciate the efforts she made to tell the stories. She became a staff writer in 2016 so maybe she is still developing her own style. I highly enjoyed Peter Hessler's pieces covering China for the New Yorker.
Interesting comment, but let me ask something. When you say younger people are more interested in buying from small individual sellers, does that include in rural areas, which is what the article is mostly about?
I would think so, although I am not in that age group so it's just my observation.
Take Douyin as an example, it has a few hundred million users, 40% to 50% of them are under age 24 and live in smaller cities or rural areas, according to various reports. Growing up with mobile internet, for them shopping on the phone while hanging around in social networks is very natural, it's personal, it's fun. That's why most sellers have already set up account in Wechat/Weibo (and recently Douyin), not to publish product listing bluntly, but to post soft articles, funny videos, a lot of them even live stream their daily activities, to try to build up followers.
I think with the mature infrastruture already in place(delivery, payment, messaging such like video chatting with the sellers, etc.), young people in rural areas care less about how big the online store is, but more about quality and fun. Plus, browsing product and talking to many shop owners on the phone are super easy while lying on the couch, something hard to do in the PC era, so it's easy to search good deals all over the places, no need to buy all items from one big store.
Also thanks to mobile phone, young people in rural areas have pretty good access to product information compared to their peers in the big cities. What they lack mostly are good education and job opportunities.
Take Douyin as an example, it has a few hundred million users, 40% to 50% of them are under age 24 and live in smaller cities or rural areas, according to various reports. Growing up with mobile internet, for them shopping on the phone while hanging around in social networks is very natural, it's personal, it's fun. That's why most sellers have already set up account in Wechat/Weibo (and recently Douyin), not to publish product listing bluntly, but to post soft articles, funny videos, a lot of them even live stream their daily activities, to try to build up followers.
I think with the mature infrastruture already in place(delivery, payment, messaging such like video chatting with the sellers, etc.), young people in rural areas care less about how big the online store is, but more about quality and fun. Plus, browsing product and talking to many shop owners on the phone are super easy while lying on the couch, something hard to do in the PC era, so it's easy to search good deals all over the places, no need to buy all items from one big store.
Also thanks to mobile phone, young people in rural areas have pretty good access to product information compared to their peers in the big cities. What they lack mostly are good education and job opportunities.
Actualy social network ecommerce is much more common in rural areas than in big cities.
this should be happening here in America more often to. There is no reason why we can't utilize our cheap vast farm land, a lot of it empty, for people who want to build things like robots, start bio-labs, do that sort of research, make interesting discoveries, build and manufacture products, work remotely, etc. There's already a huge supply chain network, and with 10kw of solar panels being under $5k (not including the inverter and wiring, I'm being very optimistic here:), and a diesel generator for other things, we should be encouraging it. The suppose next generation of satellite broadband is the icing on the cake. Right now, you're going to spend $150 for 2-3mb at 800ms, but hopefully that changes.
With the lowered cost of living, this lowers the barrier to entry to start a business. Imagine starting a business as an entrepreneur with your land and house already paid off, you'd be able to take far greater risks. I just spoke with a machine shop who complained that their prices on lathe parts are going up 25% due to the Trump China tariffs, and I asked them why don't they just make them here? The lathe parts are literally made on the lathe themselves. I pointed out, that their current product offering is basically a part-by-part clone of a popular lathe from the 1920s and is extremely outdated. Newer machines with less parts and higher precision could be more effective.
With the lowered cost of living, this lowers the barrier to entry to start a business. Imagine starting a business as an entrepreneur with your land and house already paid off, you'd be able to take far greater risks. I just spoke with a machine shop who complained that their prices on lathe parts are going up 25% due to the Trump China tariffs, and I asked them why don't they just make them here? The lathe parts are literally made on the lathe themselves. I pointed out, that their current product offering is basically a part-by-part clone of a popular lathe from the 1920s and is extremely outdated. Newer machines with less parts and higher precision could be more effective.
Bit of a meta-comment, I wonder why there are so few comments on a submission with so many points, compared to others in the same point range. (100 pts and 5 comments at the time of me typing this comment.)
I find that the submissions I notice with the highest upvote-to-comment ratios are among the most thoughtful.
Immense oligopoly on its way
JD has been doing great but I think it (and Taobao of Alibaba) has the great risk of losing the young generation (born after year 2000) who are less interested in these big box online sellers but more likely to buy from small invidual sellers, based on friends' recommendations or the sellers' promotions on social networks. For example, some of the new thriving places like Pinduoduo and Douyin (similar to Musical.ly, in fact Douyin bought Musical.ly recently) are very popular nowadays. The old giants might be gone within ten years because the ways to do ecommerce are changing so fast in China.