National Pioneers

Individuals and organizations honored for their outstanding work in poverty alleviation

national funding earmarked for water and soil conservation.

By reading books and learning from experts, Huang gained knowledge about water and soil conservation and organized villagers to protect the healthy vegetation growing on the mountains and harness mountain streams for flood prevention, water storage and irrigation. The restituted flooded land was transformed into a renowned agricultural sightseeing park.

In 2019, the total output value of the park exceeded 12 million yuan ($1.8 million), directly boosting the income of more than 200 people from over 130 poor households in Aobei and surrounding villages.

Under Huang’s supervision, several local entrepreneurs and relatively wealthy villagers in 2019 established an industrial alliance to maximize the advantages of each company and jointly deal with risks through resource sharing and real-time communication.

At the beginning of this year, as the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) hampered the sales of a large number of agricultural products, the industrial alliance coordinated its resources and helped farmers sell their produce online.

“Nowadays, my biggest wish is to forge a mature alliance, and with the policy support of the county government, everyone can live a good life through their own efforts,” Huang said.

At the award ceremony on October 17, 99 poverty reduction pioneers like Huang received the national honors. In addition, several organizations, including government offices, companies, a philanthropic foundation and a news media outlet also received the accolade.

Green poverty alleviation

While Huang has been awarded for leading his fellow townsmen out of poverty, Zhang Qi, head of the China Institute for Poverty Reduction of Beijing Normal University (BNU), received the award for research on poverty alleviation theory, policy and practice.

Since the late 1980s, Zhang has devoted himself to research on rural economy and poverty alleviation policies. “I was born in the countryside, so I know what poverty does to a person. This is why I should do research on poverty alleviation,” Zhang said.

As China’s poor people mainly live in remote rural areas, Zhang and his team mostly connect with farmers. Every year, the China Institute for Poverty Reduction sends out small teams to the poverty-stricken mountainous and rural areas of Yunnan, Guizhou, Sichuan, Gansu and other provinces to track the progress of poverty alleviation, as well as uncover the difficulties and problems in poverty alleviation.

The institute constructed China’s first green poverty reduction index and in 2014 for the first time released the China Green Poverty Reduction Index Report, emphasizing the connection between poverty alleviation and green, sustainable development.

Zhang and his team spent three years on the index. “We want to publish reports on a regular basis to prove that green poverty reduction is the most sustainable means of poverty alleviation and strong support for rural revitalization,” Zhang told China Pictorial.

He said that green poverty alleviation, achieved through endeavors such as developing rural tourism and agricultural industry, have yielded remarkable results in recent years.

When he joined BNU in 2003, he was the only professor there to conduct poverty reduction research. Over the years, the research team he led became bigger and bigger, and in 2011, a poverty alleviation research center was founded, which grew into the China Institute for Poverty Reduction in 2017.

Now, the 30-plus experts there have carried out more than 100 research projects on poverty alleviation. Their research has attracted the attention of government departments and social organizations, illuminating policy making.