Changes in most uninhabitable area: Understanding China's fight against poverty
Xihaigu was labeled the "most unfit place for human settlement" by the United Nations in the 1970s. Xihaigu's triumph over destitution, after reeling under poverty for centuries and carrying the tag of the most uninhabitable area on earth, offers a window into China's achievements in its war against poverty.
PAIRING-UP BRINGS INDUSTRIES
Xihaigu has taken up vegetable cultivation and developed a wine industry thanks to the availability of water.
More than 6,667 hectares of grapes have been planted in the Hongsipu District, yielding a fortune for 230,000 people in Xihaigu.
Zheng Yongjin, a businessman from east China's Fujian Province, built the first winery in Hongsipu in 2002. His winery currently purchases more than 2,000 tonnes of grapes a year from local farmers, while he also runs a vineyard of his own.
"Over the years, I have paid local laborers more than 80 million yuan (about 12 million U.S. dollars), and I'm happy to see their lives getting better and better," Zheng said.
Photo taken on Sept. 14, 2018 shows grapes for winery use at a plantation in Hongsipu District of Wuzhong City, northwest China's Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region. [Photo/Xinhua]
Under China's pairing-up support scheme, affluent areas are tasked with the job to help less developed ones and the coastal province of Fujian has paired up with Ningxia. Entrepreneurs and professionals from Fujian have brought in various technologies to kick off special agricultural programs in a bid to eliminate poverty.
Lin Zhanxi led his team to Pengyang County in Xihaigu in 1996. As the inventor of the Juncao technology, he brought with him six boxes of the grass seeds.
Lin taught local farmers how to cultivate mushrooms using the Juncao grass substrate in mountain caves of Pengyang. He later explored curbing desertification in Xihaigu by persuading farmers to feed the grass to cattle and sheep to replace grazing.
Qi Dengrong, a resident of Pengyang, is now in charge of a county-level mushroom agriculture park. This year, it grouped more than 40 local farmers to grow mushrooms, generating a daily output of up to 4 tonnes of fresh mushrooms.
"Without the guidance from Fujian experts, we wouldn't have had this industry here at all," Qi said.
Over the past 24 years, Fujian offered more than 3 billion yuan in financial aid to help build infrastructure in Ningxia, including water conservancy, soil conservation, rural power grids, housing, roads, radio and television network, benefiting nearly 600,000 poor people.
Fujian has also helped build 10 industrial parks in Ningxia in cooperation with the regional government of Ningxia. About 5,700 Fujian-invested enterprises have been established in Ningxia, most of which are located in Xihaigu.
