Coronavirus: Online Retailers Hold Answers For Food Supply Woes

Coronavirus has resulted in a land-lock situation for China where its drastically affected travel and supply chains. As the situation continues, China is looking for new ways to keep the people fed and maintain its food supplies. The internet might be the key supplier, China believes. Here's why.

China Coronavirus

The everyday life of the Chinese has been drastically affected by the deadly coronavirus. People are forced to stay indoors and avoid contact with other humans at all costs. So how are people to get their daily supplies of food and other necessities? Online retailers like JD.com, Missfresh, Pinduoduo, and Alibaba's Hema are supplying food items to the people in China.

However, the coronavirus is capable of spreading with simple human contact, which makes delivering supplies a dangerous mission in itself. "They work really hard, and it's dangerous. Without their services, we would not be able to survive at all," says Wang Feng, retired personnel in China, reports PTI.

Surprisingly, amidst the viral outbreak, e-commerce is one of the only few industries thriving in China. The virus has already affected stores in the country, including Apple's. And many of the component manufacturing and assembling industries in China have shut down for the same.

Thriving Online Retailers

As the only source of buying and receiving supplies, most of the Chinese population is dependent on online retailers. The Chinese government has also set up 'Contactless Distribution Point' across cities where people can pick up their goods without making any sort of human contact.

In this scenario, JD reports that it has delivered 71,500 tons of rice, flour, and other grains over the past two months. That's 20 times more than the same period when compared with last year's stats. Moreover, most of the Chinese online retailers have their own online payments services, which has boost growth in these times of crisis.

What's more, most of the e-commerce sites were used as a platform to buy electronic devices like smartphones, headphones, and so on. Ever since the virus outbreak, the retailers have been selling rice and flour more than other devices. However, as the situation is getting worse and countries have cut off contact with China, it remains questionable on what the authorities would do once the supplies run out of stock.