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CHENGDU, China, March 9, 2021 /PRNewswire=KYODO JBN/ --

News provided by China Report:

Chinese Premier Li Keqiang announced that all remaining poor rural residents,

totaling 5.51 million in early 2020, were lifted from poverty by the end of

last year, as were all of the country's remaining 52 poor counties, when

delivering the Report on the Work of the Government on March 5. Sichuan

Province in southwest China, once a major battlefield for poverty eradication,

contributed significantly to the achievement.

Of the total 183 county-level regions in Sichuan, 161 were plagued by poverty,

and 45 of them struggled in extreme poverty. Last year, 6.25 million poor

people in 11,501 villages of 88 impoverished counties rose above poverty.

Abuluoha, once "the poorest corner in China," was among the 11,501 villages. In

Yi language, "abuluoha" means "a deep valley in the mountain" or "an off-limit

place." It is nestled in a valley along the Jinsha River in Butuo County,

Liangshan Yi Autonomous Prefecture. The geological location made the village

once inaccessible by modern means of transportation. Villagers had to climb

over the mountains and cliffs or use ziplines to cross rivers to see the

outside world.

Changes came in 2019 when Sichuan vowed to make all villages accessible with

paved roads by the end of the year. In June, engineering vehicles arrived in

Abuluoha.

Construction of the merely 3.8-km-long road to the village was a daunting

challenge as most of it was close to steep cliffs. Apart from leading experts,

Sichuan managed to make the Mil Mi-26 heavy transport helicopter come to help.

"We were astonished to see an excavator walking out of the belly of an

aircraft," recalled a villager who was only 20 meters away from where the

helicopter landed.

The completion of the road a year later marked that all administrative villages

in Sichuan were accessible by motor vehicles. Thanks to the road, local

residents bade farewell to poverty, with their incomes growing exponentially.

Ending poverty is not the finishing line, but marks a new start. On February

25, China unveiled the new national administration for rural vitalization to

replace former State Council Leading Group Office of Poverty Alleviation and

Development. Behind the reshuffle is the historic shift of China's focus on

rural wok. Sichuan has already made moves to vitalize the rural areas.

Industrial prosperity is key to China's rural vitalization strategy. As an

agriculture-based province, Sichuan started from accelerating the pace of

agricultural modernization. So far, Liangshan has planned to build 118 modern

agricultural industrial parks to provide jobs to more than 80 percent of former

impoverished households.  

Farmers in Sichuan's Dayi County now do farm work on "cloud." Zhu Lisha, a

local farmer, said all the work can be finished on her mobile phone. By

clicking an app icon, she gets into a map of her farmland. The app features

four sections, namely agricultural means of production, farm work, harvest and

finance. "You can place an order on the phone and have a special team to do the

job," Zhu said, adding that it is even unnecessary to go to the farmland to get

the work done.

Another part of Sichuan's rural vitalization strategies is digital countryside

construction. In 2020, Tibetan heartthrob Ding Zhen went viral online, making

his hometown Litang County in Garze rise to fame overnight. Hanfan Village in

Litang used to face serious desertification. In 2016, the village started to

combine environmental restoration with tourism development on a trial basis by

planting drought-resistant flower species on a land measuring 53.3 hectares in

area. Beside the ocean of flowers, a 13.3-hectare prairie-themed resort was

built. While preserving the ecology, the flower farm and prairie-themed resort

brought tourism incomes to local residents.

In the future, Sichuan's focal efforts in vitalizing the rural areas will

include advancing reforms of the collective property rights system, boosting

new-type rural collective economy, exploring sustainable sources for farmers'

incomes, promoting cooperation in agriculture, further modernizing the

industrial and supply chains of agricultural industrial parks, expanding the

use of new technologies and equipment in agriculture, and improving the

environment in rural areas.

Source: China Report

Image Attachments Links:

   Link: http://asianetnews.net/view-attachment?attach-id=386158

   Caption: Local residents in Sichuan shake off the shackles of poverty by moving into new

houses from inhospitable places.