Wanda malls start selling farm goods to help poverty-stricken farmers

Chinese conglomerate Wanda Group launched a consumption-driven poverty alleviation plan in Beijing on Saturday, in an effort to help the country's poverty-stricken counties sell agricultural products.

The company has set up a total of 3,143 vending machines to sell agricultural products in the 320 Wanda malls across over 200 cities in China. The sales revenue will go directly to the villagers producing the agricultural products.

According to Wanda, in 2019, the footfall in its shopping malls totaled 4.3 billion. The flow of people and strong consumer demand provides it an advantage to sell the agricultural products to help the poverty-stricken counties. Meanwhile, Wanda has launched a mini program on WeChat to sell the products online.

Qi Jie, president of Wanda Group, said: "This year is the final year of China's poverty alleviation campaign, and the central government has issued guidelines to promote consumption-driven poverty alleviation. Wanda actively responded to the call, and decided to take advantage of its shopping malls nationwide to play a bigger role in poverty alleviation."

Wanda said every Wanda mall is equipped with 10 vending machines on average. All of the commodities sold on the machines are from the poverty alleviation list issued by the State Council Leading Group Office of Poverty Alleviation and Development.

Hong Tianyun, deputy director of the leading group office, said: "The action accurately meets the needs of consumers, let high-quality agricultural products enter thousands of households, and achieve mutual complementarity and mutual benefit."