E‑commerce and Taobao Villages

Introduction E‑commerce in China has developed at extraordinary speed in recent years with the rise of a few e‑commerce giants of global significance. Benefiting from e‑commerce expansion, some clusters of e‑commerce activity have also appeared in rural China since the mid‑2000s, and have come to be known as “Taobao Villages” (Taobao cun 淘宝村) after the e‑commerce platform Taobao owned by Alibaba. The spread of Taobao Villages across China has raised the expectations of Chinese and internation...