Empathy and tough measures underpin poverty relief efforts
Last month, 77-year-old Chen Kaizhi made his 101st trip to Baise, Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region, to carry on his 21 years of poverty relief efforts in the city.
Chen first visited in 1996. Then executive vice-mayor of Guangzhou, Guangdong province, he was tasked with helping Baise in its poverty relief work, following the central government’s decision that the more developed eastern part of the country should support the underdeveloped western part. “It was like a different world,” Chen said. Back then, Baise, which was suffering from rocky desertification, was one of 18 povertystricken areas in the country. About 1 million of its 3.57 million residents had no access to roads, 800,000 did not have a secure water supply, 600,000 lived in extreme poverty, 200,000 lacked basic living conditions and 36,000 children were out of school.
“Most villages had no power supply, or road. Let alone TV or newspapers. They were so out of touch with the outside world that they had little concept of time. Many families lacked three or four months of food in a year,” Chen said.
Chen began by conducting a series of field studies in Baise, often catching early planes from Guangzhou to Nanning, the capital of Guangx, on Friday morning and returning on Sunday night to carry on his work as vicemayor on Monday morning.
Then he and his colleagues came up with a plan — they would relocate people in extreme poverty, export labor to the Pearl River Delta in Guangdong, train grassroots government officials in Baise about poverty relief, enact economic and trade cooperation, and get dropouts to go back to school.
As a result, jobs for hundreds of thousands of laborers were found in Guangdong, more than 500 Guangdong-invested firms set up operations in Baise and more than 40,000 people in the Dashi Mountain area were settled in six immigrant zones in Baise.
Water and power are now available and all villages have roads. Baise has a high-speed railway station and nine of the 12 counties are already connected with freeways. Freeway construction is under way in three other counties.
In 1998, Chen’s focus shifted to education and its role in poverty alleviation after he assumed the post of chairman of the Guangzhou committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference.
He sought donations for teacher training, building a new high school, cultivating children from ethnic backgrounds and renovating school and kindergarten buildings. More than 30,000 students have graduated from the high school in the past 17 years.
He launched an education foundation specially for Baise in 2011, which has raised more than 140 million yuan ($21.5 million), including 220,000 yuan of his own money, and helped 31,000 children.
Chen was named vice-chairman of the China Foundation for Poverty Alleviation in 2005, after he retired from the CPPCC Guangzhou committee, with his efforts extending to earthquake stricken areas and many other poverty-plagued regions.
His contribution was recognized, winning him the title of National Poverty Alleviation Champion in 1998 and Outstanding Person in National East-West Poverty Alleviation Coordination in 2004.
The keys to poverty alleviation, Chen said, are understanding its importance, empathy toward poverty-stricken people, choosing the right solutions, tough measures, and a downto-earth working style.
“If you don’t shed tears, you don’t have deep feelings. In poverty relief work, you can never have a sense of superiority and complain that people are lazy and uncivilized. This is not right.”
In terms of tough measures, Chen recalled relocating people and providing access to roads, water, power, radio and TV and renovating thatched houses.
“Back then, when we built a road in Baise, an official at a provincial level was required to take the responsibility for 1 kilometer and a city-level official, 500 meters. No matter what, the road had to be completed.”
With its poverty rate drastically down to about 15 percent of the total population in the city, Baise is well on its way to attaining its goal of reducing the rate to less than 10 percent by 2020, helped by its growing economy, central government subsidies and other ongoing poverty-alleviation efforts, Chen said.
“Poverty is a universal issue. You cannot say too much about the achievement China has made in poverty alleviation. Poverty is a developing issue. It is lengthy, complex and arduous in nature.”
As deputy secretary-general of the CPC Guangdong Committee, Chen accompanied late State leader Deng Xiaoping during his trip to Guangdong in 1992 and always bears in mind Deng’s words that those getting rich first should help those lagging behind.
Last year, Chen started efforts to ensure children living in poor conditions have adequate financial support and receive an education and plans to continue those efforts this year.