On September 16, the fifth China Post “September 19 E-commerce Festival” was launched in Beijing. As a part of the shopping gala during the “Chinese Farmers’ Harvest Festival” held by the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, the festival focused on the principle of “Original Taste and Flavour from Original Place, Amazing Quality and Price on Amazing ULE” and highlighted the theme of “More Shopping on ULE, More Happiness with Families”. A series of measures were rolled out at the festival to facilitate and benefit farmers. All this manifests the wisdom and contribution of China Post in stimulating the rural consumption in an all-around way.

Liu Aili, Chairman of China Post Group, Zhang Jinliang, President of China Post Group, Dai Yingjun, Deputy Director-General of State Post Bureau, Kang Ning, Vice President of China Post Group, Li Fujun, Director of Social Assistance Department of National Administration for Rural Revitalization, Chen Yong, Deputy Director of the Department of Market and Informatization of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, and Li Gang, Deputy Director of the Department of Circulation Industry Development of the Ministry of Commerce attended the launching ceremony. Liu Aili and Chen Yong delivered a speech respectively.

The fifth China Post “September 19 E-commerce Festival” highlights the product features, activity themes as well as the construction of scenarios with the aim of giving better shopping experience to customers and accelerating the pace of building rural e-commerce ecosystem. This year, China Post takes the opportunity of the festival to strengthen the cooperation with relative platforms, improve its service functions, hold characteristic activities, optimize commodity structure and offer more incentives. It also pushes forward the implementation of “outlets plus stations” management mode to drive more traffic and optimizes service scenarios like “postal golden beans (similar to the function of vouchers)”, digital currency and the agent collection and self-pickup services. All these measures aim to address the difficulties of the new types of agricultural businesses such as farmers’ cooperatives and family farms in sales, finance and logistics, thereby increasing farmers’ revenue and improving the quality of rural consumption.

Mr. Liu said at the ceremony that the rural revitalization strategy is a pivotal strategy of the Party Central Committee and an important part to build the new development pattern and consolidate the foundation of domestic needs. For years, China Post, with the country’s most fundamental interests in its mind, has thoroughly carried out the policies of the Party Central Committee and actively shouldered its economic, political and social responsibilities as the “national team” of the industry. Giving the full play of its advantage of “four flows in one” (the flows of business, goods, capital and information), China Post has improved the two-way circulation channels (industrial products going to rural areas and agricultural products going to cities), comprehensive logistic network and inclusive finance system and played a crucial role in upgrading rural consumption, promoting the development of agricultural industry, constructing the circulation network between urban and rural areas as well as offering inclusive financial services. As for the process of “farm to table”, China Post empowers family farms and farmers’ cooperatives through ULE, an e-commerce platform, by building 100 standard agricultural product bases of China Post and developing the competitive brand of “postal agricultural products”. Up to now, the total sale of agricultural products has reached 5 billion yuan (about 775 million US dollars) and the tricky problem of “the first kilometer” has been effectively settled. As for the process of “industry to village”, China Post empowers traditional commercial outlets in rural areas through its supply-chain platform, provides franchise services like public convenience services and agent collection and delivery service, thus smoothing the direct channel from industrial manufacturers to rural supermarkets. So far, 420,000 ULE stations have been built. Since this year, the value of wholesale has reached 4.5 billion yuan (about 698 million US dollars) and the total volume of agent delivery is over 300 million pieces.

Mr. Chen Yong said that China Post has long leveraged its advantages in business, goods, capital and information flows to devote to serving for the agriculture, rural areas, and rural residents and has gained fruitful achievements. This year is the first year of the fourteenth Five-Year Plan. To ensure that the achievements of poverty alleviation campaign better integrate with the rural revitalization strategy, a series of policies have been set out. All these policies require the existence of China Post as an important participant, which shows the affirmation of the CPC Central Committee and government authorities on China Post in supporting the issues of agriculture, farmers and rural areas, its sincere hope for China Post in promoting rural revitalization strategy as well as its high attention to China Post in carrying out the national strategy. China Post, as the “national team” of the industry, needs to play a more important part in promoting the upgrading of rural consumption, comprehensively serving the areas of agriculture, rural areas, and farmers and boosting rural revitalization.

At the ceremony, Zhang Jinliang, Dai Yingjun, Li Fujun and Li Gang awarded trophies and certificates to the national ten pioneering ULE store owners. ULE stores are an important tool for China Post to promote the flow of agricultural products to urban areas and boost the development of ULE. ULE store owners can make the best of their social network to promote the sales of agricultural products, increase the revenue of farmers and facilitate the implementation of rural revitalization strategy. Until now, China Post has cultivated nearly 1.3 million store owners on ULE platform.

Kang Ning, representing China Post Group, exchanged cooperation agreements with four partners, including Sinofert Holding Ltd, XINHUANET Co., Ltd., and so on, reaching common understandings on such issues as providing health service in rural areas and offering online patient visit service by the “Outlets plus Stations” management mode, jointly building a service ecosystem targeted at issues relating to agriculture, rural areas, and rural people and conducting cooperation in agricultural finance and technology, jointly establishing a traceability system for postal agricultural products, the demonstration bases of reliable agricultural brands, and a general digital economy platform for traceable agricultural products, and enhancing cold chain infrastructure and providing relevant technology and equipment.

The prize-winning livestreamer in China Post New Media Competition also conducted livestreaming sales on the spot to promote the flagship product of China Post Agricultural Product Base — red pitaya from Long’an, Guangxi, which attracted a lot of followers and online buyers. This year, China Post has tapped a batch of livestreamers on product-marketing and formed a professional livestreamer team through the first China Post New Media Competition. Going forward, China Post will continue to help more agricultural products to go to urban markets and promote the upgrading of rural consumption by livestreaming promotion.

It is said that China Post has issued the China Post 2021-2022 Action Plan on Serving Rural Revitalization Strategy. According to the Action Plan, China Post will speed up the deployment of four core businesses including universal services, parcel, express and logistics business, financial services and rural e-commerce in rural areas. China Post will better serve the new development pattern whereby domestic and foreign markets can boost each other, with the domestic market as the mainstay. China Post will take more measures to give farmers more sense of gain, happiness and safety and will devote more efforts to carry out new development philosophy and establish a new pattern to serve the rural revitalization strategy.