Last but not least: a county in mountains catches up by finding its way of development
It seemed the development of Dadiba village had no solution, but the past years prove another story.
Dadiba means “big land,” but the biggest flat land in the village is only the same size as half a soccer pitch.
It is filled with countless pyramid- shape mountains in Ziyun county, southern Guizhou of Southwest China. It is not very high, but steep and slippery, covered with greenery, impossible to climb, let alone farming.
It is not a surprise that Dadiba is one of the least developed places in Guizhou. It was not connected to the power grid until December 2007, making it the last village that had electricity in Guizhou.
“When I first visited here 12 years ago, the 14- kilometer road from town entering the village took me almost two hours,” Lu Kai, who works in the publicity department of Ziyun, told the Global Times. “The road was too bad in condition, and unsafe to drive.”
But how could villages like Dadiba shake off poverty?
China launched a campaign to eliminate absolute poverty by 2020. Dadiba received aid from regional governments, while Ziyun and Guizhou received supports from the central government.
A “combat team” for poverty relief staioned in Dadiba with members from county- level governmental departments.
In Ziyun, more than 6,000, or 70 percent of officials and civil servants working in county governmental departments were dispatched to villages for similar work.
The changes have been quite apparent, especially in the past year.
The first step was to build a proper road. The project was finished 2014, when a new flat neat road, circled by the mountains, was completed to connect Dadiba and the nearby towns.
Then “combat team” introduced chayote, pubescens and Rosa roxburghii as economic products. Funding is given out to poor families to raise pigs and cows.
New safe houses have been built to replace the fragile inadequate housing. Villagers now have household electrical appliances such as refrigerators and televisions.
After six years of the poverty reduction campaign, all households had shaken off poverty in the village in October 2020.
“I can hardly see if the achievement of Dadiba’s change could be copied in another country,” Lu said.
On November 23, Ziyun Buyi and Miao autonomous county officially announced the eradication of extreme poverty along with eight other counties in Guizhou. These are China’s last nine counties that eliminated absolute poverty.
Third- party evaluations showed that overall incidence of poverty in the nine counties in Guizhou had been reduced to zero percent, and the satisfaction rate among residents was over 99 percent, said Li Jian, director of the provincial poverty alleviation and development office, at a press briefing.
In Ziyun, over the past few years, more than 4,862 households involving 20,213 people who lived in poverty have been relocated in the county as part of China’s poverty reduction campaign. They moved to new apartments in town from their old houses that were either dilapidated or in remote mountains or both.
Ziyun was finally able to shake off poverty thanks to the guidance and help from all aspects, from the central governments to the society, Yu Wei, director of Ziyun’s poverty alleviation office said.
“But we shall not celebrate,” he said. “Next we still have much work to do to consolidate and expand the work of poverty reduction.”