In order to deal with the stagnating sales of agricultural and livestock products caused by the outbreak of the novel coronavirus, North China’s Inner Mongolia autonomous region is encouraging cities and banners to promote local specialties via expanding marketing channels and building up product brands, local officials said.

Livestreaming -- an emerging popular online sales channel -- has showed that it is one of the most effective measures to help poverty-stricken people find more ways to make money, they added.

"The sales of a dozen live broadcasts is more than 100,000 yuan ($14,112.73), which is equivalent to the sales of offline stores for one month, ” said Wu Yunbo, Party chief of Dongsala village in Tongliao city.

Wu is promoting local specialties in both Mandarin and the Mongolian language through China’s leading short video and livestreaming platform, Kuaishou. 

Wu has already had more than 1 million fans on Kuaishou and his most successful live broadcast sold nearly 20,000 yuan worth of products.

More poor areas in Inner Mongolia are copying the experience, not only boosting sales but also saving costs to advertise and expand the market. 

Meanwhile, Inner Mongolia is implementing brand strategies to increase the influence of products from the autonomous region.

Inner Mongolia is one of the five major pastoral areas and 13 major grain-producing provinces and autonomous regions in the country.

Official said it has nearly 2,000 agricultural and livestock products with a protection of origin, certification of organic produce and certification of being pollution free.

They added, however, that the number of well-known brands is currently relatively small and their influence is weak. 

More efforts to build Inner Mongolia’s product brands, featuring its grassland culture and pollution-free characteristics will be made.