Online commerce reshaping the landscape of ancient Kashgar City
Print Edition
SAPHOLA Anayat’s father used to make a living peddling vegetables off the back of a donkey cart in Kashgar. Donkey carts are now a rare sight in the city in southern Xinjiang, they have been replaced by something a bit more 21st century — computers.
“My father used to hawk vegetables from village to village. When business was good, he came back all smiles, laden with snacks and treats for the family, but more often than not, after trekking for miles and miles to sell his crops, he was too tired to talk when he came back,” Saphola said.
Luckily for Saphola, 26, and his generation, commerce in the autonomous region is much easier nowadays. After his graduation from college, Saphola attended a six-month e-commerce course and got a job at an e-commerce office in his hometown.
He tracks the village harvest and coordinates with farmers to get their products from the field to the doorsteps of online buyers. He also helps his villagers, who are mostly computer illiterate, with other online errands, such as booking appointments with doctors.
“My father’s generation hardly knew there was a market beyond the next village, but now, thanks to e-commerce, customers from all over China are on our doorstep,” said Saphola.
Doing business across the vast region is no easy task, especially as it is naturally divided by large stretches of desert. The office where Saphola works helps farmers overcome these geographical barriers.
Saphola works for Kashgar Minsheng E-commerce Company, which has 43 offices across southern Xinjiang. The firm accepts orders from wholesalers and private buyers and then coordinates with the farmers to fulfil these orders, said Liu Chao, company owner.
Established in 2012, Minsheng is the biggest firm of its kind in the region and cooperates with 5,000 farmers in 18 counties and cities in southern Xinjiang.
Minsheng was not alone in identifying the gap in the market when online commerce first boomed, and the competition is fierce. Liu staked his success on cooperation — identifying offline resources, sharing wholesalers’ storage space and logistics resources.
It runs several websites, such as xjms365.com and Xianbaza, which are both open to wholesalers and buyers. Last year, it sold 37 million yuan (US$5.54 million) of farm produce.
Even before dawn brings another beautiful summer day to Kashgar, the city’s biggest farmers’ market, Kuklan, is filled to the rafters, and hundreds of anxious farmers vie to sell their fruit and vegetables.
Abdulaen, 57, gets up at 2am everyday to load his van with tomatoes and join the long queue to Kuklan market. He needs to sell all of these ripe, plump tomatoes before they turn bad in the summer heat.
“If I can’t find a wholesaler, I have to dump them, so getting here early is very important,” he said.
E-commerce also employs a lot of women in southern Xinjiang, where, up until recently, it was the norm for girls to marry early and be housewives.
“Online commerce is not only reshaping the way people shop, but is also having a positive effect on modern agriculture and lives for people in southern Xinjiang,” said Meng Yongsheng, deputy director of Economics College in Xinjiang University of Finance and Economics.
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