Seeing is believing as China kicks poverty
Andy gets up close and personal with some sheep in the Dongxiang minority autonomous county, northwest China’s Gansu Province.
I know China has already lifted hundreds of millions from poverty in the past few decades, but when I heard that the plan to eliminate absolute poverty by the end of 2020 was still going ahead, despite the global pandemic, I was both surprised and a little skeptical.
Surprised because eliminating absolute poverty, as I’m sure everyone would agree, is an important and honorable thing to do, and skeptical because I know, as we all do, just how much the global pandemic has changed everything for the worse.
Many governments around the world are putting other “projects,” so to speak, on the metaphorical back burner for the time being as they come to terms with massive job losses, lockdowns and, in many cases, widespread illness and death.
But in true China style, things march ahead at full steam, and even under the seemingly impossible circumstances we’re facing now, the mammoth task of eliminating absolute poverty would go ahead unimpeded.
I still had my doubts, though, that the success of this eight-year project to lift the remaining third of China’s 1.4 billion above the poverty line would happen as scheduled. That’s why I was excited to be offered the chance to visit not just one, but two of the country’s poorer regions last year to check out their poverty alleviation projects first hand.
Andy gossips with some of the locals under the shade of an old tree.
First I headed to a tiny village called Jielingkou in Hebei Province. There, the population of just 800 were working hard to increase tourism, which they hoped would not only lift every citizen of their village above the poverty line, but also entice some of their younger family members — most of whom were forced to leave to find work in more prosperous areas — to come home and earn a decent living there.
During the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644), Jielingkou Village was considered an extremely important and strategic part of the Great Wall. It was home to soldiers from far and wide who were stationed there to protect the inside of the wall from the outside world.
The village slowly fell out of significance — and into disrepair — as the dynamics of China changed, leaving the place a mere shadow of its glorious heyday.
So how were the people of the village hoping to become more prosperous? Through tourism. They achieved that by turning some of the hundred-year-old, traditional stone homes there into modern, comfortable B&Bs for tourists from nearby Beijing, and other parts of the country, who want to experience village life and climb their very own part of the Great Wall.
Andy enjoys a whole section of the Great Wall to himself, unheard of on other parts of the wall in busier areas.
China has a saying: He who doesn’t climb the Great Wall will never be a great man. The villagers know that all too well, and now their little slice of the country has been lifted a little closer to greatness.
My next chance to see poverty alleviation projects first hand came when I flew to Gansu Province, right up in China’s northwest.
Located about a three-hour drive from the capital, Lanzhou, is the Dongxiang minority autonomous county, a special area set up in 1950 owing to the fact that the area is inhabited mostly by the Dongxiang people, one of China’s 55 official ethnic minorities.
In 2013, nearly one-third of the population were living under the poverty line. By December last year, they too were lifted from absolute poverty.
One of their main methods for poverty alleviation centered around food, namely potato and lamb, which the area is famous for.
I visited potato fields where locals have undergone extensive training to help them increase the quality and yield of their spuds, and also to more successfully bring them to market.
I met Mada Wude, a Dongxiang local who left at the age of 17 in order to farm sheep in other areas of northwest China. He returned five years ago to help his county throw off the shackles of poverty, helping establish a sheep- breeding cooperative which has around 1,800 sheep owned by 25 families in his village.
“We provide people here with a good platform,” he told me when I visited his 25-acre farm. “Every year the profit is distributed to the people.”
On my two trips I visited local families and chatted about their quality of life, the projects designed to lift those left behind out of poverty, and the future. And I must say, as long as these projects and the amount of attention paid to those at the bottom of society remains strong, the future is looking bright.
