A remote mountain village in northwestern China's poor province Guizhou has been using popular mobile messaging app WeChat for administration innovation, such as finding a lost cow, thanks to Tencent's "We Country" program.
Tencent actually began its welfare project back in June 2009 with the idea of using the Internet for development, when it saw that the isolation, little access to information, labor migration and uneven incomes in rural parts of Guizhou and Yunnan were the major cause of poverty.
Tongguan actually consists of four villages, with an average annual income of 2,800 yuan ($ 437.12) per person, and a population mostly consisting of children and the elderly who have been left to stay there as the adults go to bigger cities to look for work, leaving the villagers Internet illiterate.
And there are natural barriers around the villages, hills and mountains, that cut off access to information so that most people hadn't even heard of smart phones or wireless networks before Tencent arrived. But now, after taking five years to get the kinks out of the system, Tencent has came up with a custom-designed "We Country" solution to "connect the disconnected".
In its initial move, Tencent worked with China Mobile and ZTE and distributed several dozen smart phones with the instant messaging application, WeChat, and, in the words of a senior Xinhua News Agency reporter, Han Song, "Tencent's 'We Country' program is unprecedented and Tongguan is now probably China's first real Internet-connected village."
And the villagers are getting used to the smart phones, with some of the elderly saying they're grateful to be able to see their children working faraway via video and to chat with them or send a message via WeChat.
The village opened its first official WeChat account this April, and now has more than 780 users, who get information on agriculture, job possibilities, pensions and insurance and, according to Wu Zhengang, the village head, "We no longer need that old loud-speaker to announce things. If anything pops up, we just message each other via WeChat and the problem is solved in the blink of an eye."
Wu then gives an interesting example of this was by explaining that when a cow disappeared from a neighbor's backyard back in March, 30 members of the local militia were mobilized and able to locate the stolen cow in only 30 minutes after receiving the owner's message on WeChat.
And they have established a virtual market, where they can post photos of homemade products and contact details there.
At the same time, Tongguan is looking at tourism, online retailing and getting rid of poverty with help from the Internet.
