Poornomore

China’s rural impoverished reap the rewards of tailor-made poverty relief projects

Streams of tourists keep homestay owner and farmer Liu Quehua extremely busy over the summer peak season. He has to arrange accommodation in the village for visitors from afar because there are no available beds at his farm.

A year ago, Liu, a villager in Chengkou, a county deep in the Daba Mountains of Sichuan Province, had no idea that he would be earning an annual salary of 30,000 yuan ($4,491) from running a hotel in his village.

The development of Liu’s business is a shining example in Chengkou of how poverty has been alleviated through rural tourism. The county received 1.85 million visitors last year, and its tourism revenue reached 290 million yuan ($43.4 million). More than 600 households in Chengkou are currently engaged in the homestay business, and about 3,000 people are employed in other tourism-related industries.

Due to a targeted approach to alleviating poverty, people like Liu, living in the countryside of southwest Sichuan, are seeing increasing benefits from the income generated by rural tourism industries.

Liu’s story isn’t an isolated case among the people who were lifted out of poverty in recent years. Statistics show that China currently has about 70 million people in rural areas living below the poverty line of 2,300 yuan ($346) in annual income.

Longnan City in northwest China’s Gansu Province has also forged its own successful e-commerce path to alleviate poverty. In less than one year, local villager Kang Weiqi, in his 20s, saw 8.7 million yuan ($1.3 million) generated in sales of apples from the family’s orchards through his online store. Kang’s business model is now an inspiring example for other poverty-stricken families keen to make their fortune.

Kang’s success has also benefited from the policy of targeted approach to alleviating poverty in Gansu, with the aim of developing its e-commerce industry. The province plans to make broadband Internet accessible for every impoverished town and village by 2017, and more than 70 percent of the population with economic difficulties will be able to find employment in the e-commerce industry by sales of specialty products unique to the region.

Xi said poverty relief has entered the final phase and is a tough nut to crack. Underlining high precision, he called for policies based on different local situations and different causes of poverty.

Some severely poverty-stricken provinces and regions have prioritized poverty alleviation over all other issues, rolling out their own programs.

Since reform and opening up in the late 1970s, China has lifted more than 700 million people out of poverty. It has set a goal of building a relatively welloff society in an all-round way by 2020, helping the remaining 70 million poor people nationwide shake off poverty.

“In this final phase of poverty reduction, the work has become harder and harder,” said Liu Yongfu, Head of the State Council Leading Group Office of Poverty Alleviation and Development (LGOP).

Most of the people living below the poverty line are now living in the rural areas with inadequate natural resources, and inconvenient traffic conditions. Reducing poverty in those areas will be costly and also bring in more difficulties, Liu added.