More than 98 percent of China's 122,900 registered poor villages will have access to the internet by 2020, according to a plan published by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.

Villager Hao Xiaoying walks through her yard. (Photo: People's Daily/Wang Xiaofang)

The mobile Internet wave has gradually surfaced in remote rural areas, and many villages in China have utilized this wave for poverty alleviation. Shanxi Province's Lingtou village is exactly one of them.

More than 100 people in Lingtou village are running online stores, and without exception, they all promote their products by doing live streams and short videos. Buzzwords as "scene marketing" and "fan economy" are bonding them with this remote village, while to sell products by live broadcasts betters the lives of the villagers.

Guo Jinping was the first villager in Lingtou to go to the online shop for training before running her own online shop. In her first online order, she sold 50kg walnuts for 1,500 yuan (about 221 US dollars) in October 2016, far exceeding expectations, which astonished the village. "Mobile phone is now our new farm tool," Guo said. 

Now the villagers in Lingtou employ live streaming to promote their products, the biggest change of which is that income has increased.

Wei Baoyu is another villager who benefits from mobile internet in Lingtou village. Not only can he chat with audiences in the live room, but he also blurts out various buzzwords like scene-marketing. His live streams vary from sowing in the fields and threshing corn, to weddings and funerals. "I'm just showing my life in the village to the outside," Wei added.

Wei Baoyu conducts a live broadcast to promote his agricultural products at his home in Lingtou village, Shanxi Province. (Photo: People's Daily/Qiao Dong)

Wei Baoyu's live viewing record is 500,000, which surprises himself. Now there are an average of 800-900 people watching his live streams. Based on the traffic support brought by his streams, Wei's online store has already had sales of 120,000 yuan (about 17,683 US dollars) in the past two years.

China will continue to facilitate the role of the Internet and big data in poverty alleviation and develop rural e-commerce and Internet-based healthcare, according to a plan jointly released by the Office of the Central Cyberspace Affairs Commission and the National Development and Reform Commission.

2018 witnessed great strides in China's poverty alleviation efforts. "Another 125 poor counties and 10 million poverty-stricken rural residents were lifted out of poverty," President Xi Jinping said in his New Year speech on the eve of the year 2019. There will be no one left alone on the road toward poverty alleviation and a moderate prosperous society.

(Compiled by Xu Zheqi)