This book follows the rise of China’s rural e-commerce villages and the struggles to reinvent them after the boom. It reveals how digital platforms, state ambitions, and local entrepreneurship converge to transform village economies, making rural China a testing ground for new approaches to development. Drawing on extensive fieldwork across China, the book moves from national policies and corporate strategies to the everyday efforts of entrepreneurs and communities. It explores commercial expansion, poverty alleviation, changing regulation, and the divergent trajectories of local industries. Through the concept of “digital developmental villages,” it shows how development takes shape through shifting alliances, competing interests, and local experiments—and how these arrangements are reworked when growth falters. The book offers a fresh perspective for readers interested in China’s political economy, rural transformation, platform capitalism, and the politics of digital development.

Tianlong You is Associate Professor at the School of Sociology and Anthropology, Sun Yat-sen University, China. His research examines rural e-commerce, digital platforms, development, and migration. His work has appeared in the China Journal, China Information, and Comparative Migration Studies. He serves on the editorial boards of several leading journals.