SHENZHEN’S four manufacturing belts (MBs), namely digital products and computers, household appliances, beauty products and women’s apparel, were part of the first batch of 23 of China’s 10+ billion yuan (US$1.54 billion) digital MBs, Taobao announced recently.

The selection of these MBs is based on transaction statistics from three Alibaba e-commerce platforms: Taobao, Tmall and 1688.com. The selected industrial clusters were concentrated in the Pearl River and Yangtze River deltas.

Guangdong Province is home to 10 digital MBs in the batch. In addition to famous industrial clusters, such as Guangzhou’s beauty MB and Shenzhen’s digital products MB, the previously less well-known ones, including Shenzhen’s household appliances MB, are developing rapidly.

It is noteworthy that Shenzhen is neck and neck with Guangzhou in women’s apparel and beauty products.

“The dazzling tens of billions are achievements of China’s MBs that have seized an opportunity of online consumption in the digital era,” Weng Yi, senior researcher of China Digital Economy Institute, said.

On the Alibaba platform, various MBs have restructured the production and sales relationship to enable a more accurate supply chain planning, more efficient resources allocation and more successful brand building. The restructuring has empowered the industrial clusters to provide new jobs.

On Feb. 3, China Internet Network Information Center released the 47th Statistical Reports on Internet Development in China, indicating that the number of Internet users in China had reached 989 million.

Facing the world’s largest netizen population, the government supports MBs by providing many preferential policies to boost their operations in R&D, design, production, marketing, logistics and finance. (Xia Yuanjie)