SCIO briefing on stabilizing the fundamentals of foreign trade and investment and promoting the quality development of commerce
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E-mail China.org.cn, May 20, 2020
Economic Daily:
As we all know, 2020 is the crucial year for completing the building of a moderately prosperous society in all respects and winning the final battle against poverty. During his inspection tour of Zhashui County in Shaanxi province, General Secretary Xi Jinping emphasized that e-commerce is an emerging business with great potential, which can promote sales of agricultural products. Mr. Zhong, what work has been done by the Ministry of Commerce to reduce the impact of the epidemic, win the final battle against poverty, and especially to promote targeted poverty alleviation through e-commerce? And what have been the achievements? Thank you.
Zhong Shan:
Thank you for your questions. Over the past three years, the Ministry of Commerce has carried out five measures to boost commerce in order to reduce poverty, and they are all making good progress.
The first is to alleviate poverty through e-commerce. Last year, we worked with related departments to achieve full coverage of all national-level poor counties in the development of e-commerce. That is to say, all poor counties now have e-commerce operations. Local governments have focused on this work and it has received positive reviews from people in the areas. Last year, the national e-commerce sales of impoverished counties reached 239.2 billion yuan, which marked a year-on-year increase of 33%. Introducing e-commerce to rural areas has indeed benefitted farmers. China has a large population and covers a vast area, so transportation can be inconvenient, particularly in many mountainous areas. These areas have high-quality agricultural products and local specialty products. However, limited transportation and promotion have made it difficult for people to sell their goods, while urban customers had no way to access these products. E-commerce provides a solution to these problems. For instance, fruits, vegetables and eggs from rural areas have huge markets in urban areas.
You just mentioned that farmers in the area where General Secretary Xi Jinping went on an inspection tour have become prosperous by utilizing e-commerce. In fact, there have been many cases of this. For example, in one family from Huan County in Gansu province, a father had been raising sheep his whole lifetime, but he could only sell them to the sheep dealers. After his son graduated from university and returned home to start a business, he reached the market through e-commerce. Last year, the son sold all the sheep raised by his father through e-commerce, and helped to sell all those raised in neighboring villages. In total, they sold 13,000 sheep for 20 million yuan. This is a typical example. This year, we will scale up efforts to reduce poverty through e-commerce, promote the development of e-commerce in poor areas to increase the income for the 5 million farmers in poor areas.
The second is to alleviate poverty through household services. We carried out a series of poverty alleviation measures, encouraging city households in over 100 cities to employ people in the registered poverty-stricken families for housekeeping services. This has helped over 500,000 people in these villages and poor areas to find jobs. Last year, I travelled to Guang'an in Sichuan province to conduct inspection and research works. There, we visited one family which had got out of poverty. The hostess worked in the household service industry. She explained that the local government had helped her find a housekeeping job in the city, thereby increasing the family's income and allowing the whole family to get out of poverty. Having escaped poverty, she brought eight friends from her village to find housekeeping jobs in the city, all of whom were happy and satisfied. This year, the Ministry of Commerce will scale up efforts to reduce poverty through household services and strive to help 700,000 people in villages and poverty-stricken areas to find jobs.
In addition, we are also alleviating poverty by providing labor services overseas, through industrial development as well as border trade. These works are currently being carried out in full swing. For example, in achieving poverty alleviation through foreign labor service cooperation, we had 9.92 million workers overseas last year, including over 50,000 people from poverty-stricken counties. For poverty alleviation through industrial development, we have launched programs connecting farm to supermarkets and wholesalers, thereby expanding sale channels of farm products. For poverty alleviation through border trade, last year, our border trade reached $51.5 billion. At the same time, we have also provided assistance to border economic cooperation zones and offered jobs to over 180,000 people. This has helped promote the vitality of border areas and enriched the people living there.
Faced with huge task of poverty alleviation, we will continue to follow the important instructions made by General Secretary Xi Jinping. We will do our best to work on the five measures for poverty alleviation and make more contributions to the work in order to win the final battle against poverty and achieve a moderately prosperous society in all respects. Thank you.
Hu Kaihong:
On the topic of poverty alleviation, we will hold another press conference this afternoon. Mr. Liu Yongfu, director of the Office of State Council Leading Group of Poverty Alleviation and Development, will brief the media on it. We welcome your attention.
That concludes today's press conference. Thank you, Minister Zhong Shan. Thank you, Vice Minister Wang Shouwen and Wang Bingnan. Thank you all.
Translated and edited by Wang Yiming, Fan Junmei, Zhu Bochen, Li Huiru, Mi Xingang, Zhang Rui, Duan Yaying, Huang Shan, Yan Xiaoqing, Zhang Jiaqi, Wang Qian, Wang Wei, Wu Jin, Yuan Fang, Guo Yiming, David Ball, Laura Zheng, Geoffrey Murray, Scott Rainen. In case of any dispute over a discrepancy, the Chinese version is deemed to prevail.
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