Staying on Track China’s island province Hainan empowers residents to rise out of poverty despite epidemic
Over the past month, He Dexin, a resident of Ruilian Village in Chengmai, a county in Hainan Province in south China, has risen before dawn every morning to harvest and sell the vegetables he planted last winter, among them cabbages, peppers and beans.
Chengmai is a fruit and vegetable distribution center. Growing vegetables in winter is an important way for local farmers to increase their income.
His family was previously registered as impoverished. His finances were strained by lack of advanced agricultural techniques and the cost of providing for a school-age child. Thanks to a training program organized by the local government, his farming skills have improved, and so has his income.
In 2016, the per-capita income of his household was only 2,000 yuan ($282). That figure rose to 12,000 yuan ($1,692) in 2019.
“My income will increase further this year if I expand the planting scale of my crops and find a job operating excavators,” He said.
In recent years, Chengmai has attached great importance to improving farmers’ skills and has hosted nearly 100 training sessions on construction, excavator operation, business and animal husbandry.
According to He, he has already made over 30,000 yuan ($4,229) selling vegetables this year and expects to make more with his remaining beans.
Boosting development
Since last year, the Chengmai county government has promoted the development of industries for poverty alleviation by scouting talent, especially from among university graduates.
Cai Yuxu, one such graduate, has started a rural cooperative to raise cattle in collaboration with seven other graduates who have returned to the county.
Cai Yuxu has established ranches in Ruixi and Jinjiang, two townships in Chengmai. Last July when applying to build another ranch in Zhongxing, another town in the county, that town’s government helped him rent land and accelerated official approval of the project. In less than half a year, a new ranch with over 500 cattle went into operation.
The township government has already committed 4.72 million yuan ($665,332) to a poverty alleviation fund to buy shares for 565 impoverished households in the rural cooperative.
Local farmers saw collective returns of 175,600 yuan ($24,753) in 2017 and 670,000 yuan ($94,443) in 2018. The cooperative also offered skills training to impoverished households to recruit them to work at the farms.
Lai Peng, a partner of Cai Yuxu, said the cooperative has established a complete industrial chain including the planting of forage grass, fodder production, cattle breeding and the treatment and utilization of manure.
Mitigating epidemic’s impact
The outbreak of the novel coronavirus has posed new challenges to Hainan’s fight against poverty. At a recent meeting, Li Jun, Deputy Secretary of Hainan Provincial Committee of the Communist Party of China, said that the results of poverty alleviation should be consolidated and epidemic control and poverty alleviation should go hand in hand.
Many Chengmai natives have been working as migrant workers in other places, and the novel coronavirus outbreak has prevented them from returning to work elsewhere. In Mailing Village, 24 impoverished people have been unable to return to work due to the epidemic. To ensure these people continue to have an income during the epidemic, village officials have arranged for some to work at a local vegetable farm, with eight hired to work at the village’s epidemic prevention checkpoint.
Mailing is not the only place to help impoverished people during the epidemic. More than 1,000 people in Chengmai’s 11 townships have been assigned to posts for epidemic control with a wage of 200 yuan ($28) per day. At the same time, the poverty alleviation office of Chengmai has registered the impoverished individuals unable to resume work because of the epidemic, publishing recruitment advertisements for companies and key projects online to help farmers find jobs.
Cai Yongquan, a 50-year-old villager in Wanning, another county in Hainan, has already risen out of poverty, but has grown increasingly worried about not being able to work during the epidemic.
Cai Yongquan has three children, two of whom go to school. He sank below the poverty line several years ago as a consequence of his children’s education expenses. However, with the help of the local government, his children had access to an educational poverty alleviation fund. He exchanged his land for shares in a local rural cooperative and receives a dividend every year. He also found a job nearby to supplement his income. In time, Cai Yongquan’s household managed to rise out of poverty, but the epidemic has brought new pressure on his finances.
On hearing about Cai Yongquan’s difficulties, poverty alleviation official Yang Fang reported his case to the government. The local government created 1,300 temporary jobs in epidemic prevention and control and gave priority to hiring people in financial difficulty.
Wanning has improved its tropical agriculture, an important source of income for local farmers. However, since the start of the epidemic, difficulty in selling agricultural produce has dealt a heavy blow to those who have only just risen out of poverty. Local government has mobilized relevant departments and public servants to offer one-on-one assistance to 542 affected farmers by purchasing their products and helping them sell produce online.
Zhou Defeng, Deputy Director of the Wanning poverty alleviation office, said they will continue to optimize their work method and make more accurate calculations of farmers’ losses due to the difficulty in selling produce or failure to go to work.
Promoting self-reliance
In 2019, Hainan accomplished its yearly target of lifting 45,000 people out of poverty, according to the annual work report of the provincial government released in January. In last year, the province’s incidence of poverty dropped from 0.79 percent to 0.01 percent. On February 29, the province announced that all its poor counties had shed poverty.
Sparking the internal motivation of impoverished residents to rise out of poverty is a crucial and challenging part of poverty alleviation. In 2019 Hainan opened television night schools to help local farmers acquire more skills and empower them to shake off poverty. The province has also launched a campaign against behaviors such as laziness, boozing and gambling, and it encourages local farmers to help themselves in the battle against poverty. CA