Remote village busy escaping poverty
Print Edition
RESIDENTS in Luotuowan village are busy this winter, building houses and roads.
“The traditional restful winter has become a busy one,” said Gu Runjin, 68, a Party official in the mountain village in north China’s Hebei Province.
Deep in the Taihang Mountains, Fuping County, which administers the village, has been under a national poverty reduction program since the mid-1990s. In 2013, the county’s registered poverty-stricken population was around 110,000, or 48 percent of its total.
Changes started taking place in the remote village after a visit by Xi Jinping in December 2012, shortly after he was elected general secretary of the Communist Party’s Central Committee.
Xi had told officials to work hard to help villagers in poverty live a better life as soon as was possible.
Tang Rongbin, 73, from Luotuowan, and Gu Chenghu, 65, from Gujiatai, both had visits from Xi and later they had their homes rebuilt, with the result that their living standards improved.
“My current living conditions are almost the same as someone living in the city. I used to live in a clay house and was not accustomed to my new home when I moved in,” Gu said. His new house has four bedrooms, a living room and a kitchen.
Since 2013, Gu and his son have been working in construction in the village, earning 200 yuan (US$29) a day. They also receive 4,000 yuan a year to rent their farmland.
Tang’s house was renovated with money from a government fund.
“I never dreamed of living in such a house before,” he said. He rents three rooms of his house to a tourism company.
Farmers in Luotuowan no longer cultivate the traditional crops of potato and corn, once their major source of income. Instead, they grow apples and mushrooms, with an investment from two companies. This brings more income in the form of rents, salaries and bonuses from the two firms.
Per capita income in the village increased to 3,000 yuan in 2015 from less than 1,000 in 2012. In 2015 alone, 48 families escaped from poverty.
“Poverty reduction cannot simply rely on ‘transfusing blood.’ We must take advantage of resources and develop industries,” said Xu Xiangdong, an official from the provincial housing department who was sent to the village to help the poverty reduction program.
Fuping County’s per capita income was 5,815 yuan in 2015, from 3,262 yuan four years earlier, and its poverty-hit population has been reduced to 60,000, said Hao Guochi, Fuping Party secretary.
China aims to eradicate rural poverty by 2020, lifting the remaining 55 million rural poor out of poverty at roughly 10 million each year. The country’s poverty line is 2,300 yuan in annual income.
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