IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/jdevst/v57y2021i10p1739-1754.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Digitally Down to the Countryside: Fintech and Rural Development in China

Author

Listed:
  • Sherry Tao Kong
  • Nicholas Loubere

Abstract

Digital finance has changed the landscape of financial service provision worldwide. China in particular, with a booming fintech sector and large numbers of users, is at the forefront of the expansion of digital financial services. As such, the country has become an important case for better understanding how fintech operates and what its expansion entails for socioeconomic development. This paper focuses on the provision of new models of digital finance in rural China by two Internet giants – JD and Alibaba. Against the backdrop of decades of generally unsuccessful attempts to expand financial coverage in rural areas by conventional bricks-and-mortar financial institutions, these two rural fintech models have the potential to expand digital financial service provision in new ways. This paper critically examines these fintech models, contextualises them within the broader trajectory of pushes to expand digital financial inclusion worldwide, considers the parallels with agricultural supplier contracting systems elsewhere, and explores the potential benefits and risks that they pose for rural development and rural livelihoods in China and elsewhere.

Suggested Citation

  • Sherry Tao Kong & Nicholas Loubere, 2021. "Digitally Down to the Countryside: Fintech and Rural Development in China," Journal of Development Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 57(10), pages 1739-1754, October.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:jdevst:v:57:y:2021:i:10:p:1739-1754
    DOI: 10.1080/00220388.2021.1919631
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/00220388.2021.1919631
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/00220388.2021.1919631?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Zhang, Shengling & Dou, Wei & Wu, Zihao & Hao, Yu, 2023. "Does the financial support to rural areas help to reduce carbon emissions? Evidence from China," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 127(PA).
    2. Amirreza Kazemikhasragh & Marianna Vanessa Buoni Pineda, 2022. "Financial inclusion and education: An empirical study of financial inclusion in the face of the pandemic emergency due to Covid‐19 in Latin America and the Caribbean," Review of Development Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 26(3), pages 1785-1797, August.
    3. Yingkai Yin & Hongxin Ma & Zhenni Wu & Aobo Yue, 2023. "How Does China Build Its Fintech Strategy? A Perspective of Policy Evolution," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(13), pages 1-21, June.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:jdevst:v:57:y:2021:i:10:p:1739-1754. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/FJDS20 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.