Jack Ma talked about how Alibaba is extending its e-commerce reach to China’s 800 million rural residents. The spread of mobile phones is helping bring economic progress to farmers, some 200 million of which make less than $1 a day, he said .

In the past five months we covered 4,500 villages,” Ma said. “We went to a rural area, it took the farmers two hours to walk to the middle of the town and buy things, but today because the mobile phone, we can deliver things to their home to their village within 72 hours.” And farmers aren’t just buying products, Ma said. Many are learning to more efficiently sell their produce via the Internet.

Jack Ma Spoke at The CGI closing plenary session, watch his speech right here in our World Liberty TV, Business Channel.