Community factories help lift Shaanxi villagers out of poverty

Developing fast

Xi Jinghua was the person who opened the gloves workshop. To take better care of his parents and kids, he came back to his hometown from a wealthier coastal area in southeastern China after working there for 14 years.

A woman works in a gloves workshop in Pingli county, northwestern China's Shaanxi Province, on July 26, 2018. [Photo/Xinhua]

Within a few months, he opened two other workshops, and employed over 50 local workers in total. The large demand for gloves led Xi to open his fourth workshop in the spring of 2015. For this one, he selected a site in Yaofugou community in downtown Pingli, a community of 450 rural households relocated from landslide-prone areas.

Not long after the workshop had created 80 job opportunities, officials of Ankang city and Pingli county came to conduct research. From their findings, Pingli county soon decided to launch policies to encourage people to set up labor-intensive factories close to relocated communities.

In the summer of 2016, Xi began to cooperate with a gloves company based in Hong Kong, and planned to build over 10 community factories across the county with 5 million yuan. Hearing this, the chief of the nearby Dagui town visited Xi for opportunities to create jobs for Dagui's relocated people, and promised to waive rent and decoration expenses.

Within a month, a community factory opened in Dagui. Over 50 female workers produced gloves that were intended for the overseas market.

In two years, Xi established 17 community factories in total. The Zhang siblings also upgraded their family workshop into four community factories. According to the investment promotion official Tang Yiping, by the end of 2016, community factories had sprung up in all townships and towns in Pingli.