sector and point out that besides establishing farmer organizations (Hazell et al. 2010 and Markelova et al. 2009) and promoting contract farming between smallholders and agribusiness firms (Abebe et al. 2013), e-commerce can serve as an efficient alternative to enhance market access for smallholders.

A fast-growing body of case studies on e-commerce in rural China focuses on Taobao Villages. Numerous cases show the prosperity of Taobao Villages and that people gain wealth and have better lives through participating in e-commerce. Case studies, such as Shaji in Jiangsu province and Caoxian in Shandong province, show many young and talented people, including women, have returned to their hometown in rural areas, earning income similar to or higher than they were as migrant workers in the cities and at the same time enjoying family life with their elderly and children. Many have become leaders of e-commerce in their home villages and are role models for their fellow villagers. Case studies in Mengjin in Henan province show people are enriched by access to new markets through online platforms for traditional cultural products such as peony painting and Tang tri-color ceramics. Case studies in Xifeng in Guizhou province show households received higher farmgate price for kiwis and therefore have an incentive to increase the production through online sales to domestic as well as European markets. Many cases, including poverty-stricken counties in remote and mountainous areas, show that access to an online market allows people in rural areas to enjoy the convenience, variety, and similarly low prices that are enjoyed by people in big cities.<sup>3</sup> Many case studies aim to understand the formation of Taobao Villages and their spatial patterns. Zeng et al. (2015) examine two of the first Taobao Villages, Dongfeng village in Jiangsu province and Junpu village in Guangdong province, and highlight a five-step process for the formation of Taobao Villages: introduction of Taobao projects, primary diffusion, accelerated diffusion, collective cooperation, and vertical agglomeration. They emphasize the prerequisites for the healthy development of Taobao Villages include two factors, one is the identification of a promising e-commerce project which can naturally trigger diffusion, and the other is decent local infrastructure, such as internet, transportation, and logistics. Qi et al. (2018) analyze the determinants of the formation of Taobao Villages using county-level panel data from the statistical yearbooks of Zhejiang and Jiangsu provinces for the years 2012–2015. They find that from the array of county-level characteristics, villages with more educated populations are more likely to become Taobao Villages. The Chinese Taobao Village development report (Nanjing University and AliResearch 2018) examines the patterns of formation of the Taobao Villages and their evolution, drawing from extensive fieldwork. The report shows that, while most Taobao Villages on the coast developed spontaneously, often led by a couple of first-mover return migrants and followed by fellow villages, government support, often through subsidized service provision by experienced e-commerce service firms, has become a major force for the incubation of inland Taobao Villages.

> 3 See more details in AliResearch (2017), _Taobao Villages._

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