Company's program helps people in countryside to access goods, services

Almost half of China's 1.3 billion population still live in rural areas. While incomes are growing, some rural residents still lack the employment opportunities and everyday products and services that city dwellers take for granted.

That is what Alibaba Group Holdings Ltd sees as a huge unmet need. Through an initiative called the Rural Taobao program, the e-commerce titan is helping to raise living standards in China's countryside by providing e-commerce access to millions of the nations' poorer residents. Taobao is the customer-to-customer online marketplace owned by Alibaba.