Customers buy fresh vegetables in one of Hema’s grocery stores in Beijing

New retail brings a breath of fresh air to brick-and-mortar stores and creates new innovative job opportunities

For Hao Xufeng, a 25-year-old young woman living in Beijing, shopping for clothes online has already become a habit.

“It’s a lot cheaper, but it also creates new problems,” she told ChinAfrica, adding that she often has to browse online shops for many hours before finding clothes to her liking. More often than not, she said, the clothes she found do not fit her.

She is not the only one. In the current era of e-commerce, many customers spend a lot of time carefully selecting products that they eventually return to vendors. Moreover,Hao said she never buys fresh food products online. “When it gets home, it’s already musty. I prefer to see meat and vegetables in front of me in the store when I buy them,”said the young woman.

“请大家回到座位，继续我们的演出，”声音再次响起，“现在，舞台上的椅子只剩下十把，没有抢到座位的人，将接受我们的惩罚。”

Alibaba is not alone in wanting to “revolutionize” the Chinese retail trade industry.Tencent, a Chinese Internet giant, JD.com,the second biggest e-commerce platform in China, and Baidu, the biggest Chinese search engine, have become dynamic players on this new front. In 2017 alone, Alibaba and Tencent invested at least 100 billion yuan ($15.9 billion) in brick-and-mortar businesses.

According to AliResearch under Alibaba,New Retail revolves around building a sales ecosystem merging online and brick-andmortar channels by leveraging big data,cloud computing and artificial intelligence,while always putting the focus on consumers. Rather than trying to convert online users into offline customers, or vice versa,e-commerce giant Alibaba wants to use data and technology to enhance the retail experience, including offline.

文化旅游发展研究主要集中于民族文化旅游、民俗旅游领域，近期研究主要聚焦于文化旅游与产业融合[1-3]，文化旅游与区域发展[4-6]，文化旅游与生态扶贫[7-9]等。基于生态廊道的产业协同发展研究，逐步成为生态保护下区域产业升级研究的热点，成为长江上游地方经济发展突围的热点。乌江流域地跨云、贵、渝、鄂四省的46县市，既是喀斯特地质集中、石漠化严重的欠发达生态脆弱区，也是长江上游生态屏障的核心支撑区域。乌江沿途自然风光旖旎，民俗风情浓郁，人文历史厚重，区域生态使命使其无法通过大规模工业化迅速发展区域经济，实现产业生态化升级与地方经济快速发展迫在眉睫。

It is precisely to solve these problems that New Retail was born, a concept first proposed in October 2016 by Jack Ma, founder and CEO of Alibaba Group. “In 10 or 20 years, e-commerce will have made way for New Retail,” he said.

JACK MA CEO of Alibaba Group

Indeed, New Retail goes hand in hand with agricultural industrialization. With its direct procurement method in the producing region and zero intermediary supply chain, it enables operational standardization, brand building and traceability.

In 10 or 20 years,e-commerce will have made way for new retail.

During the 2018 Two Sessions of the National People’s Congress and the National Committee of the Chinese People’s Consultative Conference in March, New Retail was very much the talk of the town in Beijing.Li Jun, Deputy to the 13th National People’s Congress visited a Hema store in Beijing.From a village in Sichuan Province in southwestern China, he was very interested in understanding how New Retail could allow city dwellers to have access to better quality agricultural products at a lower price.

Among new initiatives, Hema, Alibaba’s only offline brand, can be considered a great success. Its first store opened in January 2016 in Shanghai, and encompasses three functions: supermarket, restaurant and vegetable market. According to Hou Yi, Hema’s CEO, all Hema stores have turned pro fits since they opened six months ago, even though prices are relatively low.

If so many great players are shifting their focus to offline businesses, it’s because of the bottleneck that is currently building up in the virtual domain. “According to available data, the number of online consumers active on a daily basis was around 500 million in 2017. The market is saturated, and it is no longer easy to maintain growth. We must, therefore, turn our attention to offline,”said Wang Youwei, Associate Professor at Shanghai’s Fudan University.

Emerging opportunities

“Our low prices are due to the fact that we buy directly from the source, which eliminates intermediaries,” said Hou. This procurement method guarantees the freshness of the products, which bene fits both consumers and farmers.

不久前，京东自主研发的无人大飞机首飞成功，对此王振辉表示，无人机的发展，是京东整个无人机体系里的一个非常重要的架构。“我们会不断研发出不同重量的无人机。现在江苏宿迁是我们无人机的操控中心，也是无人机人员培训中心。无人机的大规模应用还涉及到空域的问题，京东无人机目前已在陕西、江苏、海南、青海、广东、福建、广西共7省进行常态化物流配送，有效解决许多农村、道路不便地区最后一公里的配送问题，让智慧物流造福了这些地带和人群。”

根据阴茎皮肤缺乏长度及阴囊具体情况决定手术切口，对于合并有蹼状阴茎的情况，于阴茎阴囊交界处行楔形皮肤切除，而对于无蹼状或阴囊发育差者可在正中行纵形切开。经上述切口，将阴茎体拖出，分离并松解阴茎 Buck 筋膜表面的异常索带至阴茎基底部，彻底延长阴茎体，在阴茎阴囊交界处，将阴囊肉膜与阴茎根部尿道表面或周围的 Buck 筋膜行缝合固定，以下移阴囊，再分别缝合阴囊各层，成形阴茎阴囊角(图11)。

“This innovative retail mode offers new opportunities to agriculture businesses and villages,” said Li, who hopes that New Retail can engage with more farmers in a new mode of cooperation to revitalize and enrich the countryside.

Such growth also means new and more job opportunities. According to a report of the Labor and Human Resources Department of Renmin University of China, Alibaba created 36.81 million jobs in 2017, an increase of 6 million compared to 2015.Such growth is due in a large part to New Retail, according to experts.

In addition, brick-and-mortar stores opened by Internet companies also contribute to job creation. For example, to date,Hema has opened 40 stores in 10 Chinese cities, which has also given rise to a demand for more talents in training, sales, logistics and data analysis. According to the 2018 Report on the Work of the Government,China will seek to develop new types of jobs by leveraging Internet Plus. To this end, New Retail has the potential to play a major role.

版面留白，即在网页界面空间中留出一定比例的空白。在网页编排设计中适度的留白能在心理上让用户产生无限的联想，使网页界面上的图形和文字之间产生呼应，给用户带来舒适的视觉体验。增加网页编排中的留白，能让网页界面更具有呼吸感，充满韵律和节奏，能使用户快速搜索信息，有效浏览网页内容。同时，也增强了网页中有效信息的可读性与易识别性，最终达到文字、图形、编排之间的协调统一。

As early as November 2016, in fact, the Chinese Government published a document on offline business innovation that mentioned the emergence of New Retail.Later, in September 2017, the Ministry of Commerce conducted a survey on New Retail and praised Hema’s experience in this area.

“When a new type of industry emerges,the government can play an important and positive role. As New Retail advances on the road of development, it must not miss out on the government’s guidance and support,”concluded Zhang Jian, an expert from the China Electronic Commerce Association. ca