Big gains in harsh environment
Village on arid slopes leverages support measures and self-reliance for rapid development
Editor’s note: With China set to meet its goal this year of eliminating extreme poverty before next year’s 100th anniversary of the founding of the Communist Party of China, this series looks at the efforts of different areas of the country to erase poverty and improve livelihoods.
Villager Ma Maizhi, 52, climbs out of a manhole, up to his knees in mud but smiling broadly as he announces that the pipes have been cleared. Ma is working right outside his old home, an adobe hut built on the slopes of Bulenggou village in Dongxiang autonomous county of the Linxia Hui autonomous prefecture, Northwest China’s Gansu province.
Like the grand concrete compound of the cultural center set to showcase ethnic Dongxiang traditions and customs right next to his previous premises, Ma has since moved to a new nine-room house, complete with electricity, running water and other modern conveniences.
The infrastructure improvements reflect the profound changes felt in villagers’ lives as part of major poverty alleviation measures nationwide, with stakeholders and beneficiaries like Ma working hand-in-hand to close the development gap in record time.
“The pipes, roads, buildings … we never had all these just a few years ago,” Ma said.
Other than his waterworks duties, Ma also helps with village sanitation and construction, which, together with government grants and other support, add to his eight- person household income of up to 80,000 yuan ($11,800) a year.
It is a stark difference from less than a decade ago, when they had to subsist on the potatoes, wheat and other crops they grew on their 0.74-hectare farmland.
Down the slope at a cookie production plant, his wife Ma Mai Re Ze, 44, cuts traditional Dongxiang “Hua Guo Guo” dough into creative knots and shapes before they are fried in rapeseed oil.
Ma, who has been working at the plant for two years after receiving skills training under local government support, earns up to 3,000 yuan a month, making her an equal contributor to the family income.
In the past, before she found work at the plant, women’s status in the village was not as high as men, but new jobs and wages like hers have helped to change that mindset, Ma said.
“We can all help to improve our lives together, thanks to these changes in such a short time,” she said.
On Feb 3, 2013, President Xi Jinping visited the Ma family in their old adobe home during an inspection tour of the province.
Xi, who is also general secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, said the Party
and the government attach great importance to poverty alleviation and development, especially those of ethnic communities. More support will be given to help the villagers, who must “carry forth the spirit of selfreliance, find a path to development, work hard and change the face of poverty early”, Xi said.
Water must be brought in, roads laid and a new countryside constructed, to allow the poor to rid themselves of poverty and live a moderately prosperous life as soon as possible, he said.
In the few years following Xi’s visit, local villagers and officials worked toward the goals he stressed, with major anti-poverty measures helping overcome Bulenggou’s harsh living environment to spur unprecedented progress and development.
Ma Maizhi’s old compound has since been transformed into an exhibition space to reflect the village’s progress after Xi’s visit, with tourists flocking to the site regularly to learn from its achievements.
Bulenggou sits amid the dry highlands of southwestern Gansu.
About 60 households of more than 300 residents make up the village, with limited farmland, poor infrastructure, inadequate water and other shortages pushing them to the forefront of the country’s fight against extreme poverty in the past decades.
About 80 percent of Bulenggou villagers used to live in the hardscrabble adobe homes built on its barren slopes, many of them without running water, electricity and other basic amenities. The village was accessed via dirt tracks, with the nearest hospital 9 kilometers away.
Villagers soon received a lifeline when a water-supply project — including 15 km of underground pipes and seven reservoirs — brought the precious resource straight to their homes, allowing taps to flow uninterrupted.
Within the decade, villagers moved to modern homes, advanced machinery carved out more than 270 hectares
of terrace fields, solar-powered lamps lit the streets, convenience stores opened their doors and public squares set up as recreational spaces.
Latest healthcare facilities include fully equipped clinics to help prevent and treat illnesses in the community.
The rapid improvements in Bulenggou highlight the nationwide resolve to end extreme poverty — defined as living with less than 2,300 yuan in annual income — by the end of this year. Eight years ago, the per capita net income of Bulenggou farmers was recorded at 1,624 yuan, significantly lower than the provincial average, while poverty rates hit up to 96 percent.
By the end of 2018, the per capita disposable income of villagers reached 6,815 yuan, more than four times the figure in 2012.
Dongxiang itself is one of the 23 counties in Gansu which has experienced severe poverty. It has a population of more than 310,000 distributed across 1,510 square kilometers. Impoverished Dongxiang residents numbered 109,100 at the end of 2013. That figure dropped to 12,800 by the end of 2019, with 114 villages shedding their poverty label and the county’s rural residents achieving a per capita disposable income of 5,906 yuan, according to local government figures.
Pillar industries marked out to further tap water-supply projects and fuel “high-efficiency” agricultural development zones include cattle and sheep breeding facilities, Chinese medicinal plant sites, and forestry and fruit farming belts, with township tourism demonstration hubs helping to complement the economic growth. Animal husbandry drives cover 1.68 million sheep, adding more than 1,100 yuan to the income of every povertyhit household.
Bulenggou villager Ma Jianying, 47, has been heading a sheep breeding cooperative for the past five years. With the help of government loans, grants and subsidies, his 500-squaremeter
facility can hold more than 300 sheep that help rake in over 200,000 yuan a year.
It is a vast improvement from his life before the anti-poverty measures, when his five-member household had to subsist on corn and potatoes grown on a 0.27-hectare plot.
“Our sheep, famous for their quality meat, are a major part of our lives here,” Ma said. “Together with the roads, logistics networks and other improved infrastructure, they have now given us a firm way to move ahead.”
Similarly, potato production forms a large part of the county’s agriculture push, involving more than 20 million yuan of investment and covering 18,667 hectares of cropland and processing plants along the Tao River economic belt.
Dongxiang’s medicinal honeysuckle industrial chain projects included 247 hectares of trial planting sites last year. A 0.67-hectare plot reaps about 150 kg of the flowers; at 24 yuan per kg, average profit per plot can exceed 3,000 yuan. Another 35 million yuan will be invested this year to promote the crop covering 667 hectares in 13 townships, according to local poverty alleviation plans.
The county is also banking on emerging and new industries to further improve the livelihoods of its residents. During the 13th Five-Year Plan (2016-20), Dongxiang invested 620 million yuan to implement photovoltaic projects generating more than 101 megawatts of power, build 35 village-level photovoltaic power stations and power more than 100 poverty-hit villages.
The projects are expected to help generate more than 113 million yuan in income, boosting household incomes by at least 3,000 yuan and helping to sustain related wages spanning two decades.
Similar projects are being carried out in nascent sectors ranging from e-commerce to tourism.
Yang Zhijun, deputy secretary of the county Party committee, said the next few steps will involve monitoring mechanisms to prevent a “return to poverty”, in part by ensuring that key income targets are met and assistance measures in place to cope with disasters, illnesses and other factors that may adversely affect lives.
“Sustainable industry is key to stable income growth. To that effect, we will endeavor to extend production chains to help raise more incomes,” he said.
In April 2018, the county also rolled out more programs to encourage women in the village to take part in skills training and job placements in sectors ranging from agriculture to food manufacturing. Within a month, workshops helped more than 30 women find jobs, reporting average monthly incomes of up to 3,000 yuan.
Ma Juan, 29, has been spearheading the push to involve more women in industry in Bulenggou. Ma returned to her Dongxiang hometown three years ago after completing her tertiary studies in the city, helping the production and distribution of the ethnic group’s traditional cookies.
The Bulenggou cookie production plant, which employs 16 women, including villager Ma Mai Re Ze, and with a reported monthly output capacity of 12 metric tons valued at 280,000 yuan, showcases the latest marketing, e-commerce and other technologies that the young social entrepreneur helped initiate in her community.
“I wanted to drive positive change that included women’s contributions and their empowerment,” Ma Juan said.
“At first, I wanted to leave this place and escape poverty. But my perspectives changed and I felt it was important to return and make a difference,” she said.