Lu Zhankai, 35, has filmed and posted over 3,000 video clips of villagers picking edible mountain products in the deep mountains of China's northernmost Heilongjiang Province.
His clips not only present the bountiful resources in the forest areas of northeast China but also promote the local specialties to customers across the country.
Located in the core area of Sanjiang Plain, Lu's hometown, Raohe County, boasts fertile land. Its mountain products, such as black bee honey and pine nuts, are of high quality at a reasonable price. However, the remote mountainous location hinders the products' sales.
"I want to take agricultural products from my hometown out of the mountain with the help of the internet," said Lu.
At the end of 2018, he started sharing video clips on the media platform by the name of "Lu Xiaokai." The real and vivid content soon garnered considerable attention from netizens.
To date, he has amassed more than seven million followers on Douyin, the Chinese equivalent of TikTok.
Equipped with popularity and internet experience, Lu signed contracts with more than 300 farmers to procure honey, wild vegetables and mushrooms, among other agricultural products, and started selling them through e-commerce.
Since 2021, he has founded two local companies specializing in agricultural products procurement and e-commerce sales, with the total sales volume so far topping 70 million yuan (about 9.86 million U.S. dollars).
Lu's booming e-commerce business is attributable to Raohe County's efforts to develop its e-commerce industry. By adopting measures such as market cultivation and building regional brands, the county saw its e-commerce transaction volume reach 1.03 billion yuan in 2023, a 297 percent year-on-year increase.
Raohe County is not alone. With a population of just 143,000 in central China's Hunan Province, Guzhang County has boasted a number of rural influencers with more than one million followers on the internet, thanks to the local efforts to improve e-commerce continuously.
In 2023, Guzhang County's e-commerce transaction volume was about 1.93 billion yuan, with the e-commerce sales of agricultural products reaching 225.3 million yuan.
Regarding the province, data shows that in 2023, its rural online retail sales rose 16.9 percent year on year, while its online retail sales of agricultural products increased by 14.48 percent year on year.
In recent years, China's rural e-commerce has gradually embraced high-quality development, thanks to the efforts of people from all walks of life across the country. As a new engine for economic development, rural e-commerce is playing a key role in promoting the country's rural revitalization.
In March, China rolled out a guideline to advance the high-quality development of e-commerce in its rural areas, aiming to ride the emerging digital economy wave to establish a new development pattern and improve rural consumption and the income of rural residents.
The guideline proposes 14 detailed policies in six aspects, including building a multi-level rural e-commerce comprehensive service platform, accelerating the construction of a modern logistics and distribution system, and fostering diversified new e-commerce entities in rural areas.
According to Sun Haojin, director of the economic research institute with the Heilongjiang Provincial Academy of Social Sciences, the imbalance between urban and rural areas in China has decided the high-quality development of its rural e-commerce, and the guidelines have tried to tackle the issues such as constraints of brands, logistics, and talent in a targeted manner.