An inside look at one of China’s first Taobao villages
Over on e-flux, Stephan Petermann takes us on a narrated tour of Dong Feng, one of the first “Taobao villages” in China:
When we arrive in Dong Feng in the spring of 2017, the number of Taobao shops has increased from the initial three to nearly 16,000, with an average density of more than three per capita, the highest in China. Dong Feng used to be home to a few farmers, a modest group of pig breeders, and a local waste recycling industry. Today, it offers more than 35,000 jobs related to Taobao commerce, with a turnover of 493 million RMB (63 million Euro) last Singles’ Day, the largest offline and online shopping day in the world. Dong Feng is a Taobao village…
In recognition of this growth, rural areas with a certain concentration of online shops and a collective ten million RMB turnover qualify as a Taobao village, which provides the village with additional support for training, marketing and expanding the infrastructure connected to the platform…
The average age seems to deviate from the cliché of dying villages. Dong Feng is rather young, with a considerable amount of people having come from nearby villages. The village is plastered with slogans like “A Pleasant Wealth Miracle, easy like a Trifling Matter,” “To be Rich, E-commerce leads the way,” and “Put down the hoe, pick up the mouse.” Many slogans promote equal rights and are gender sensitive, like “Women are powerful, busy with Business.” Compared with Facebook’s “Move fast and break things” or Amazon’s “Invent and simplify,” Taobao’s propaganda seems more socially considerate, “inclusive,” and optimistic…
Like other internet customer-to-customer (c2c) platforms like Uber, Dong Feng is suffering from a race to the bottom. Social cohesion in the village is under pressure. Successful products are immediately copied by others, which leads to the same product being offered in different versions by dozens, if not hundreds of different Dong Feng shops…
Read the full article: Put down the hoe, pick up the mouse.