Key Messages
Digital Transformation In Rural China: Exploring The Incredible Ways Technology Is Reshaping Everyday Life
Blockchain Chicken Farm provides a fresh look at the future of China and how digital technologies are transforming the country.
From its booming mega-cities to its rural backroads and villages, readers get an up close look at how globalism and innovation are shaping and impacting daily life.
Along the way, you’ll find out where to buy the best counterfeit products, witness firsthand how villages can become factories, and uncover why Peppa Pig sometimes smokes cigarettes.
The author takes you through some of the most cutting edge technological advancements happening in the world today and offers a glimpse into what the future may hold for this rapidly evolving nation.
The Complex Relationship Between Urban And Rural Areas In China – How Villages Have Provided For The Country’S Economic And Social Development
China is a complex country that has been shaped by the dynamic and intertwined relationship between urban and rural areas.
When the People’s Republic of China was established in 1949, it was predominantly an agrarian society with most of its people living in small towns and villages around the countryside.
The Chinese Communist Party was only able to gain power by using this peasant population to their benefit.
During the 1980s and 90s, China’s economy began to boom as small rural businesses, known as Town and Village Enterprises (TVEs), started contributing up to 25% of the nation’s GDP.
This helped provide jobs for many citizens and raised their standard of living.
Today, many still migrate from major cities to their ancestral homes for Chunyun or Spring festival; but although 40% of China’s population lives in the rural areas, both city and countryside are pivotal for the success of each other.
The government wants both to work together for further industrialization which is why efforts have been made on building IT infrastructure as well.
Hence, it is quite clear that China owes its current state today largely due to complex relationships between urban and rural areas.
China Uses Blockchain Technology To Enhance Food Safety And Quality
China is taking major steps to ensure the safety of its food supply.
To combat the problem of a complex network of small farmers and traders, China has been utilizing new technologies to ensure food safety.
In Sanqiao Village, blockchain chicken farms are the latest revolutionary way the country is fighting food contamination.
GoGoChicken was the first blockchain chicken farm and it raises high-quality, free-range poultry that sells at a premium price in coastal cities.
With blockchain technology, each chicken is tracked and monitored from birth all the way until it reaches the table; this means that when people buy a blockchain chicken they can scan a code and see every moment of its life on an exclusive website.
This technology makes falsifying any information virtually impossible.
By introducing innovation in its agricultural industry, China is making sure its food safety rating will improve and its citizens will be safe from contamination.
Online Learning Is Transforming Rural China, But A Divide Still Remains Between City And Country Access To Education
Online learning is having an immense impact on rural China.
Sun Wei, a 25 year old from Anhui province, is one example of the transformation taking place.
Fascinated by model planes, he found a community online and trained himself to be a drone pilot.
His success in precision agriculture has earned him enough income to escape the typical trajectory of his peers—working at a state-owned railway plant.
But Sun Wei’s story isn’t just about one person.
XAG, the leader in precision agriculture using piloted drones, employs thousands of rural youth as operators.
By providing accessible training through online classes, it offers an opportunity for financial and educational advancement which were previously unattainable; something that city dwellers still have a much higher access to compared to their rural counterparts.
This divide is clearly illustrated by China’s 2015 Number 7 High School experiment – where only 10% of students continued education after high school in the rural regions doing part of Yunnan and Guangxi provinces – and its somewhat surprising result over three years; 88 students accepted into prestigious universities such as Tsinghua and Peking Universities.
China’S Shanzhai Economy Is Revolutionizing Innovation
When it comes to innovation, China has long been overlooked.
Far too often, the assumption is that they are just copycats of Western technology, not capable of creating their own products or services.
But this couldn’t be further from the truth.
In China they understand that innovation can come from sharing and adapting ideas instead of starting from scratch every time.
Just take a look at Huaqiangbei in Shenzhen, where you’ll find hordes of small-scale companies creating amazing devices out of minimal resources.
There’s proof that through collaboration and leveraging existing technologies within the confines of an accessible framework for re-engineering, China can create its own innovative products using a method known as shanzhai.
With a culture built upon sharing and remixing ideas, Chinese engineers have taken existing products and repurposed them into something entirely new and exciting – even without having to invest large amounts in research and development.
This culture has allowed China to stay ahead of the curve when it comes to technological advancements in the world market.
Through economic advances powered by adaptation rather than creation, it’s clear that for many inventors in China innovation comes from sharing and tweaking ideas – molding them into something much greater than what was previously thought possible!
The Widespread Collection Of Data And Surveillance In China Raises Ethical Concerns
China’s surveillance state has its fair share of problems, both practical and ethical.
Practically speaking, the government system of monitoring and tracking citizens is far from perfect – in cities like Guiyang, many urban villages are filled with ever-shifting migrant communities that prove difficult to catalogue into comprehensive databases.
Companies like Face++ offer a solution in theory, fielding facial recognition software and government initiatives that use surveillance cameras to monitor public spaces; however, the lack of cameras in Chinese cities paired with inaccuracies of the software often leave their efforts ineffective.
On an ethical level, there is a host of issues with a surveillance state.
The most concerning issue is that these systems tend to disproportionately target marginalized populations such as the poor or minorities.
As a result, it can not only lead to inaccurate crime statistics but also severely hamper an individual’s growth potential by continuously labeling them based on past negative data points associated with their name.
The Internet Economy Is Transforming Life In China’S Remote Villages
Internet commerce has been a hugely beneficial force for China’s rural communities, allowing them to integrate into the global economy.
This change has been spearheaded by e-commerce giant Alibaba and its website Taobao.com, which launched the Rural Taobao strategy in 2013.
The strategy allowed villagers to buy goods from the website, as well as to sell their own locally produced items and handicrafts on it – with many families earning much higher incomes than ever before.
Thanks to this effort, there are now over 3,000 ‘Taobao Villages’ across 24 provinces in China.
Through internet commerce, these remote villages have become connected with the wider world – no longer relying solely on subsistence farming and having access to more customers than ever before.
However, while this newfound income is welcome news for local residents, it also poses challenges of its own; a precarious balance between traditional farming and the demands of selling goods online can be difficult to maintain and unregulated manufacturing can harm nearby ecosystems.
Despite any downsides though, Taobao is continuing to grow rapidly each year – testament to how invaluable internet commerce is for rural Chinese communities looking towards a better future.
The Chinese Shehui Ren: Navigating Anxious Ambition In An Unstable Economy
China’s younger generation is struggling with a complex mix of anxiety and ambition as they navigate their future.
They face an unequal access to opportunities, rising economic inequality, and the expectations of achieving traditional success — making it feel more out of reach than ever before.
Shehui ren culture has become a way for Chinese youth to express their discontent and search for meaning.
They flock to video streaming apps like TikTok and Kuaishou where they can find entertainment, companionship, and even financial security through online entrepreneurship.
The Chinese Dream calls for everyone to work hard at school, get a good job, build a stable life — but many find themselves unable to do so.
By turning toward shehui ren culture, these individuals are finding solace, sometimes even fortune amongst all the uncertainty in their lives.
Unfortunately though, this sort of cavalier attitude isn’t taken too kindly by the government who has started censoring nihilistic Peppa Pig memes as they reflect the attitudes of many anxious and alienated young people in China.
Wrap Up
The takeaway from Blockchain Chicken Farm: The Future of Tomorrow’s Food is, ultimately, that the future of food lies in the combination of traditional rural life and groundbreaking new technologies.
With the internet now connecting small villages to the global economy, it has enabled isolated students to find alternative career paths and changed how young people view their futures.
This book helps readers understand how this all works together, giving them access to practical knowledge on how to make their own success stories.
It will be a must-read for anyone wanting to catch up to the technological revolution going on in some of China’s most remote places.
