Poor areas benefiting from targeted policies

Intellectual property is playing a crucial role in poverty alleviation in China, with a number of IP projects developed in key industries in disadvantaged areas.

One such project is taking place in the broad bean industry in Zhangjiakou’s Chongli district in Hebei province.

Once a State-level poverty-alleviation area, Chongli receives support from the National Intellectual Property Administration.

“In the past, locals were unable to efficiently process broad beans (a local crop) so we invested in production lines to support the industry,” said Pan Bin, an official at the communication department of NIPA dispatched to Chongli to assist in poverty alleviation.

NIPA invested 1.46 million yuan ($222,930) in supporting the construction of a 67-hectare broad bean base, purchasing agricultural facilities and building refrigeration houses, according to Pan.

This year, the base’s land use rights, covering tens of hectares, were transferred to the locals, benefiting 158 households. The move is expected to increase the average annual revenue by 1,820 yuan for each household.

The base has modern facilities such as an unmanned harvester developed with artificial intelligence technology. The machine can harvest crops using the Beidou satellite navigation system.

The administration has also promoted Chongli’s broad bean industry through brand promotion. Chongli broad bean has been approved a trademark certification of geographical indication, and was listed in the 2020 GI promotion projects in June.

In August, the authority introduced the China National Institute of Standardization to develop local standards for the broad beans, promoting the ownership of the GI product.

In the past two years, the sales volume of the Chongli broad bean industry has grown to 20 million yuan, Pan said.

“Helping locals alleviate poverty through GIs and IP has increased farmers’ awareness of brand building and promotion,” Pan said.

For poverty alleviation, China has explored effective ways in integrating patented technologies, trademark brands and GIs, said Gan Shaoning, deputy head of NIPA, at a recent news conference.

GIs bear the public interest of specific regions. Compared with developed regions, impoverished regions normally have more abundant GI resources, according to NIPA.

Since 2019, NIPA has launched 21 projects to promote GI applications in impoverished regions. To date, more than 10 million yuan has been invested in 43 State-level impoverished counties in 17 provinces. GI industries have benefited more than 600,000 impoverished people in these areas.

Another project aiding poverty alleviation involves a tree-planting technology. The technology was developed to plant trees in Nagchu area in Southwest China’s Tibet autonomous region.

Jointly developed by Elion Resources Group, an ecological technology service provider; Peking University; the Chinese Academy of Sciences and other agricultural and forest institutions, the project includes technology integration and innovation and aims at overcoming the limiting factors of temperature, moisture, soil and wind, according to Cui Zhengnan, a staff member at the group.

With an average altitude of more than 4,500 meters, Nagchu is an ecologically fragile area, and was known in the past as “the only city in China without trees”.

With the support of the Ministry of Science and Technology and the Tibet autonomous region, Elion began research on the tree planting technology in Nagchu in 2016, according to the company.

“We have applied for 28 patents, with 21 of them authorized,” Cui said.

The project has provided job opportunities for more than 20,000 people in Nagchu, offering more than 3.6 million yuan in remuneration for labor services since 2017, she said.

Over the past four years, the technology has accumulated to introduce more than 350,000 trees of 46 species of trees and shrubs to the region, selecting seven competitive varieties, achieving the annual planting survival rate of 98 percent and the annual overwintering preservation rate of over 85 percent, according to the company.

LIU DONGJUN / XINHUA An environmental engineer checks meteorological data recording equipment to improve the plant survival rate in Nagchu, Tibet autonomous region.