Alibaba’s Digital County BU was established by Alibaba Group to spearhead digitalization of counties. The BU has a full set of digital solutions for rural revitalization in China. By integrating various agricultural/rural-related capabilities of Alibaba and leveraging cloud computing, Internet of Things, artificial intelligence and blockchain, Alibaba’s Digital County BU is tasked to boost rural revitalization and promote common prosperity for farmers. The BU has cooperated with more than 150 counties in China. After years of efforts, Alibaba Digital County project has achieved fruitful results.
During the 2021’s Tmall Double 11 Global Shopping Festival, according to the statistics of Taobao and Tmall platform, the e-commerce sales of 160 key counties which Chinese government provided priority support increased by 44.2% YoY; the sales of agricultural products in these counties increased by 24.8%. Furthermore, the e-commerce sales of 832 counties which were just lifted out of poverty rose by 28.8% YoY. Over the past eight years, the total sales of agricultural products on Alibaba’s platform has reached 1 trillion yuan.
In terms of industry revitalization, the sales of agricultural products in more than 1,000 counties across the country continued to grow on Alibaba’s platform. Alibaba has dispatched 20 employees as “special commissioners for rural revitalization” to 20 counties in China. Thanks to their hard work, the agricultural industrial belts in these counties which have the presence of these employees are brought to the next level
In terms of talent revitalization, over the past four months, Alibaba has sponsored an additional 1,180 rural principals and teachers, organized 118 e-commerce experts to provide training programs for rural areas, recorded and completed 1,026 digital courses. Moreover, Alibaba trained more than 100,000 (measured by person-time) e-commerce practitioners and nearly 50,000 (measured by person-time) rural doctors in 333 county-level hospitals.

https://dc.taobao.com/

• China

• Remote and rural communities

Alibaba launched the “One Thousand Counties and Hundreds of Thousands of Villages” project in 2014. After that, Alibaba’s office for integrated agricultural revitalization was established in 2019. In 2020, Digital County BU was established at Alibaba. With all of these efforts combined, Alibaba has gained profound insights into county-level markets in China, has deeply integrated with county-level industries and has extensively covered county-related scenarios.
Take digitalization of county-level industries as a case in point: Alibaba’s Digital County BU conducts industrial planning and analysis to enable counties to build omni-channel & shared e-commerce service center. Furthermore, the BU rebrands feature products in counties as premium goods to sell them on e-commerce platform and build shared regional brands for products in the same region. Moreover, the BU constructs warehouses at places of origin of agricultural products to improve supply chain and logistics system. In addition to these initiatives, the BU leverages integrated marketing and brand communication to increase sales volume, in order to enhance digital capabilities across the entire industrial chain in these counties, thereby enabling innovation of local products and increasing productivity as well as enhancing cooperation in a targeted way.
Digital solution for revitalizing industries which was developed by Alibaba’s Digital County BU has been rolled out in over 40 counties across China, including Deqing County and Longquan County in Zhejiang Province, Fengxian County in Jiangsu Province, Feicheng County in Shandong Province, Nanhe District in Hebei Province, Dayao County of Yunnan Province, Aohan Banner County of Inner Mongolia and Aksu of Xinjiang.

Alibaba’s Digital County BU has been enhancing engagement with counties to support digitalization in these places. To foster high-quality development of agriculture, Alibaba’s Digital County BU launched a strategic program for the branding of agriculture, to leverage digitalization to cover the entire industrial chain of agriculture: It partners Alibaba’s philanthropy team, Tmall, Taobao, Taobao Live, Freshippo and Cainiao (logistics business), and brings into full play Alibaba’s technological strength in cloud computing, blockchain and artificial intelligence, to enable green and sustainable development of agriculture through such initiatives as quality control of agricultural products, source tracing of place of origin and protection of intellectual property rights. Moreover, it is committed to building brands of agricultural products and shared regional brands for products in the same region so that good products will have good brand exposure. As a result, farmers can enjoy better return while consumers can have worry-free experience when purchasing agricultural products.
Furthermore, Alibaba’s Digital County BU is very committed to talent revitalization in rural areas. Enabled by digital tools, the BU provides online and offline integrated training and strives to cultivate more talents with knowledge about digitalization so that these talents can join hands with the BU to boost rural revitalization.

 The most extensive and comprehensive digital county solution in China Alibaba’s digital county solution adopts integrated technologies and architecture to provide digitized services to counties, thereby driving industrial upgrade there and improving farmers’ quality of life. Enabled by amazing capabilities of the platform, promote prosperity for all Chinese farmers—From agricultural products to agricultural commodities and consumer goods, adjustment of supply and demand, logistics, quality control, brand operation, and after-sales service all involve complex digital decision-making and operations. Alibaba’s Digital County Operation System can help farmers and county administrators improve digitization, efficiency, and benefits, and achieve better industrial synergies with the support of Alibaba Ecosystem. Help improve the digital governance capabilities at township level in China—In addition to improving the efficiency of commerce, Alibaba’s Digital County Operation System also provides a powerful boost to the digital governance capabilities at township-level through real-time environment monitoring & governance and other interactive capabilities through mobile Apps. The operating system balances the commonality and individuality of counties (rural areas), is more open and compatible, and can mobilize a variety of resources to launch customized solutions to more accurately meet the needs of digitalization of counties. The priority of this initiative is to improve information service system for agriculture, rural areas and farmers. To be more specific, the initiative will pursue these goals: Precise management of village affairs, improvement of ecological environment, convenient services for villagers and cultural progress in rural areas. All these goals will be connected to enable more coherent and systematic governance of rural areas.