Chinese top grads to yearn for start-ups in hinterlands of China

A group of top talents enlisted from some of the world’s most prestigious universities, including Yale, Tsinghua, and Cornell, now plan to put their talent and skills to use in reinvigorating rural townships.

(Strive For China members pose for photos in Zhaojia county, Sichuan. Photo courtesy of Strive For China)

Graduated from Yale University last year, 24-year-old Gu Jiaqi co-founded Strive For China, a self-innovation platform for talent introduction, poverty alleviation, and rural revitalization in the underdeveloped areas in China.

Having forged a high-paying career in computer science, Gu gravitated toward Zhaojia County, one of the most impoverished counties in southwest China’s Sichuan Province, to start over his positive idea that aims to mobilize villagers in rural development.

(Gu Jiaqi helps a local farmer in Zhaojia county, Sichuan. Photo courtesy of Strive For China)

Ten of the dynamos like Gu in Strive For China have pioneered several pilots that introduced the contemporary spirit of e-commerce and innovative entrepreneurial skills to under-resourced areas in Sichuan.

“I was inspired by the non-governmental voluntary campaigns around the globe that helped to eliminate poverty and solve other issues when I was at Yale. This is why I call upon more talents with similar intentions as me to do something valuable for their hometown,” Gu told People’s Daily Online.

“We have successfully endorsed marketing campaigns selling tangerines in cooperation with local rural cooperatives in Sichuan’s capital Chengdu in November last year,” Gu introduced.

Another chicken-raising initiative piloted in the county aims to strengthen industrialization-led cooperation with local leading enterprises, according to Zhang Jiaqi, another co-founder of Strive For China and a fresh graduate with a law degree from the University of Warwick, who got involved with Strive For China after volunteering at a refugee camp in Greece.

“We helped create 72,000 RMB in revenues on a trial basis by investing in 500 chicks. We’re not chicken or tangerine farmers ourselves, but we help launch partnerships between micro agricultural businesses with experienced local enterprises,” Zhang added.

(Gu Jiaqi helps with teaching at a primary school in Zhaojia county, Sichuan. Photo courtesy of Strive For China)

Plans in the near future that leverage crop farming and circulation of farm products in northern China’s Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region have already been added to the agenda.

According to Gu, Strive For China is now ready to introduce more top talents from home and abroad and is executing structural guidance in the modern agriculture.

The platform is among the many epitomes of the young volunteer-based rural revitalization programs in China.

Other leading organizations such as Serve For China, a non-profit organization dedicated to poverty alleviation, as well as Teach For China and others, are widely known to recruit, train, and place top university graduates in Chinese poverty-stricken areas, which offers fresh impetus in efforts at poverty elimination and reducing educational inequality.

These start-ups keep the finger on the pulse of China’s national strategy, as the Central Rural Work Conference has accorded high priority to achieving basic modernization of agriculture and rural areas by 2035 and comprehensive rural revitalization by 2050.

China has vowed to lift all of its poor—some 30 million people—out of poverty by 2020 to realize its goal of building a moderately prosperous society.

“China is beginning to see the glimmers of hope when an incremental number of well-educated young Chinese who recognize the promising future of rural China devote themselves to it,” lauded Yang Tuan, a researcher at Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. 

(Photo courtesy of Strive For China)