Shanxi lifts villagers out of poverty through poverty relief efforts

Combination photo shows a residential house in Mayinghe Village of Youyu County, Shuozhou, north China's Shanxi Province (top, undated file photo); and a new hostel run by a villager in the same village on July 21, 2020 (bottom, photo taken by Cao Yang). Located on the fringes of the Mu Us Desert, the forest cover of Youyu County was less than 0.3 percent in the mid-20th century. Thanks to unceasing efforts on both afforestation and tourism, 55 percent of the county's land is now covered by forests and 99 percent of desertified land is under control. In 2019, the local rural residents' annual per capita income was about 9,000 yuan (1,283 U.S. dollars). The recent poverty relief efforts by Shanxi Province include: make road networks access to rural villages, relocate rural residents to better housing, afforest barren lands with green trees, and stimulate employment by developing tourism. Without these, the province's many plateau and mountain villages would have remained impoverished due to lack of decent roads and arable lands, plus the ensuing loss of labour force and industrial diversity. By February 2020, a total of 7,993 villages in all of the 58 impoverished counties in Shanxi have shaken off poverty, with the incidence of poverty dropping to less than 0.1 percent. [Photo/Xinhua]