Dinglou was officially designated by Alibaba in 2012 as the first Taobao village. Since then, the number of Taobao villages has soared from 1,311 in 2016 to 3,202 across twenty-four provinces in China in 2018. When I talked to one researcher at AliResearch, he was hopeful that the number would grow. After all, it’s a win-win model for Alibaba and economists in the central government. It repopulates the countryside and addresses the “hollowed-out village” phenomenon. Young people who leave places like Dinglou village find themselves coming back home instead of staying in cities. One official
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