A file photo of residents shopping in an upgraded farmers' market in Xiamen, Fujian province. [Photo/WeChat account: xiamen_swj]

Xiamen in Fujian province has achieved fruitful results in piloting the construction of 15-minute living circles in 10 communities since July 2021.

A variety of encouraging policies and subsidies, including the creation of fresh food convenient stores in communities and upgrading farmers' markets, have been put in place over the past year under the direction of the municipal bureau of commerce in order to build 15-minute convenient living circles.

As of May of this year, Xiamen had nominated 101 farmers' markets for upgrading and had already finished the upgrading work on 74 of them.

In order to address residents' consumption issues, the creation of 15-minute convenient living circles has attracted efforts from numerous departments in a variety of areas, including land use, housing, finance, and business.

In addition, an increasing number of convenience stores have been established in Xiamen, including renowned ones like 7-Eleven and Lawson.

By constructing elderly care stations and providing catering and food delivery services, Xiamen has additionally stepped up its efforts to finish the system for providing elderly care services, which is essential for the creation of 15-minute convenient living circles. 

Advanced information technologies, such as 5G, big data, artificial intelligent, and internet of things, have also been applied to empower the pilot construction of 15-minute convenient living circles in Xiamen.

Xiamen has encouraged e-commerce platforms to cooperate with leading e-commerce companies such as JD, Suning and Gome to provide high-quality services to the public.

Xiamen has also encouraged community-based fresh food e-commerce businesses to form a denser layout, and offer a faster and better grocery shopping service to the public. For example, Dingdong Maicai has set up 42 front warehouses in Xiamen so that the delivery is faster and the delivered products are fresher.

A file photo shows elderly residents playing table tennis at a community's elderly care station in Siming district, Xiamen. [Photo/WeChat account: xiamen_swj]