In 2019, Mexican entrepreneur Andrés Díaz Bedolla visited a small village in east China as part of a program of the Electronic World Trade Platform (eWTP), which was launched in 2016 by Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba to support small businesses around the world. Residents of Bainiu Village in Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province, once relied on making the long trek out of their mountain home to sell their local specialty goods at fairs. However, e-commerce industrial chains became an economic pillar in the village around a decade ago and have changed their lives for the better.
Bedolla found Bainiu different from the Chinese villages he had imagined as its houses are well-built and many young people have returned to start e-commerce businesses, which inspired him to promote the model in rural areas of Mexico. As founder of
