How to get rich in rural China

For years China’s answer to rural poverty was to encourage people to pack up and move to the cities. That prompted the biggest migration in human history as hundreds of millions left the land for factories and service jobs. Extreme poverty was eradicated but China’s villages became left-behind places, home to the elderly and the very young.

But that’s changing. The government is ploughing money into model villages, replete with coffee shops and galleries. And rural live-streaming, where farm folks sell their wares direct to wealthy urbanites, has become a profitable industry.