Entrepreneurial Local-state Driven Rural E-commerce Development: Evidence From Less-developed Rural West China

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Presentation title: Entrepreneurial local-state driven rural e-commerce development: Evidence from less-developed rural West China

Abstract: Though ICT infrastructure and e-commerce emerged first in urban areas, they are increasingly being used by rural community to help mitigate geographical isolation and information asymmetries. This study investigates how e-commerce, as a form of digital platform, is exploited and harnessed towards rural development in the less-developed rural West China. It draws on field research into e-commerce development in Xiushan, a county-level territory of Chongqing Municipality of West China. The key actors across state, market and community and their interactions formed in rural e-commerce practices are investigated to decipher how e-commerce is exploited to foster rural development in West China. In the case of Xiushan in less-developed rural West China, rural e-commerce practice is found as an entrepreneurial development mode practised by different actors. The formation of this novel regional development mode is driven by its entrepreneurial local state (county-level government), which mobilises and leverages private sector via different agents to empower grass-root rural entrepreneurs to get participated. This research sheds light on how ICTs and e-commerce can be exploited to catalyse breakthroughs in rural and regional development in a wider context of Global South.

Biography of speaker: Dr Yitian Ren is an Assistant Professor and Director of Spatial Analysis and Policy Lab at Department of Urban Planning and Design, Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University; and Honorary Associate of The University of Liverpool. She obtained PhD in Planning and Environmental Management from The University of Manchester with Full Scholarship and has won the prestigious Manchester Doctoral College (MDC) Excellence Award. Dr Ren’s research focuses on Urban (re)development, Rural restructuring, Digital Transformation, Entrepreneurial Development, and Sustainable Built Environment. Her research works have appeared in the top journals in the field such as Cities, Sustainable Cities and Society, Land Use Policy, Habitat International, and Scientific Data (Nature Portfolio); with the H-index of 27. Dr Ren has been named a 2024 Top Scholar by ScholarGPS and currently serves as Editorial Board Member of Humanities and Social Science Communications and Assistant Editor of Journal of Urban Management.

Period	11 Feb 2026
Held at	Lingnan University, Hong Kong
Degree of Recognition	International