"Internet +" will not hate the poor and love the rich.

In the past few days, I was quite surprised by a situation learned by the inspection team of the State Council in Gansu Province.

When the province reported to the inspection team on the development of new industries and new business type, he mentioned one thing: in 2014, the Gansu provincial government and Alibaba Group signed a strategic cooperation framework agreement, the two sides jointly build Taobao "Gansu Pavilion with Chinese characteristics" and offline physical stores. Unexpectedly, "Taobao Gansu Pavilion" in April this year in the national provincial pavilions, traffic ranking first, comprehensive ranking second, platform sales ranked third.

In Gansu Province, Longnan City, located in the Qinba Mountains with backward transportation infrastructure, has unexpectedly become the "largest city of e-commerce" in Gansu. More than 6000 online stores have been set up in the city. Local characteristic agricultural products, such as olives, pepper, walnuts, and Chinese herbal medicines, are marketed nationwide through the Internet, with sales exceeding 1 billion yuan.

The rise of e-commerce has directly promoted the local people to get rid of poverty, bringing 17000 people to employment in just one year, and the per capita income of farmers has increased by 240yuan. Longnan has also been identified by the Poverty Alleviation Office of the State Council as the first pilot city for poverty alleviation through e-commerce.

People often think that e-commerce like new business type has soil in big cities such as "north, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen," and it is very difficult to set up e-commerce in the underdeveloped central and western regions, especially in poor mountainous areas with inconvenient transportation and poor communications. Longnan's practice subverts this view.

In fact, the Internet will not hate the poor and love the rich. Not only that, the Internet can shorten the space distance most quickly, but also help to narrow the gap between the rich and the poor. While we are keen on Internet + finance, + medical care, and + cars, "Internet +" can also play a role in poverty alleviation.

In the past, we often said that "if you want to get rich, build roads first", which is the hard truth for the development of the real economy. Only when the road is opened can materials flow; when the road is opened, the door to the outside world can be opened, and people's minds will change accordingly.

But in the Internet age, the network can be one step ahead. When the tangible road is not so smooth, the invisible network can cross mountains and rivers and instantly connect the whole world. Moreover, the Internet can not only meet each other's needs, but also make ideas collide and dock quickly.

Take Longnan as an example, the e-commerce model developed in advance allows the demand outside the mountains to communicate directly, finding the end-users after removing the intermediate links, and the logistics is broken into parts, which greatly alleviates the pressure of backward traffic. Tens of thousands of tons of agricultural products shipped at a time, and decomposed into countless express parcels out of the mountain, are two completely different transport concepts, the bottleneck of the road will be significantly reduced.

In addition, the characteristics of low threshold and low risk have been proved in the development of urban e-commerce, and this new business model is also suitable for entrepreneurs in poor areas with weak economic strength. Not only that, Longnan also has a group of university student village officials, who are educated, knowledgeable, and familiar with the Internet. They are the first batch of water testers among the more than 6,000 e-commerce businesses in Longnan. College student village officials understand external needs and are familiar with local resources, and become the seeds of entrepreneurship. Drive mountain people into the Internet, not enough to get out of the village to get out of poverty and become rich.

The story of Longnan tells us that the Internet is by no means the monopoly of big cities, and it also makes great achievements in remote mountainous areas. For western provinces like Gansu, it will take time to build highways into every mountain, but broadband access is also a bridge to the world. "Internet + 's deep mountains and remote areas" may be the shortcut to change the poverty and backwardness of the mountain areas.