How N China’s Inner Mongolia lifts all county-level regions out of poverty

Thanks to efforts to alleviate poverty by ways including developing featured industries and improving transportation infrastructure, north China’s Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region has managed to help its entire county-level regions shake-off poverty, Xinhuanet.com reported on April 19.

Last month, another 20 county-level regions in Inner Mongolia were removed from China’s list of impoverished counties.

So far, the poverty headcount ratio of Inner Mongolia has dropped to 0.11 percent from 11.7 percent in 2013. Meanwhile, all of the 31 impoverished county-level regions and 3,694 impoverished villages in the region have been lifted out of poverty.

In recent years, governments at various levels of the region have suited their poverty alleviation measures to local conditions, revitalizing rural areas and helping free the poor population from poverty by developing crop farming and breeding industry with local features.

Many local areas have developed a wide-range of agricultural and livestock product brands, selling relevant products to clients across the country via various promotion and marketing channels, including online platforms.

With online promotion and marketing becoming an increasingly important means of reducing poverty through consumption, more and more government officials have started to promote featured local products in front of cameras.

Last year, Secretary of Communist Party of China (CPC) Committee of Inner Mongolia’s Hinggan League and party chiefs of various banners and counties of the League, promoted local rice on multiple platforms, such as television stations and online platforms, helping the rice become a popular special local product.

According to a credible source, Hinggan League has by far sold over 2,000 tons of the famous local rice via online platforms, with the value of sales exceeding 10 million yuan (about $1.4 million).

This year, some of the famous local agricultural products were overstocked because of the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19).

In an effort to help farmers sell these products, many local government officials have promoted relevant products via live streaming.

Yu Baojun, head of Aohan Banner, Chifeng city of Inner Mongolia, has promoted local millet in person via live streaming on an e-commerce platform.

The online show, which lasted for half an hour, was watched by more than 700,000 Internet users, selling out of the 6 tons of millet prepared for the show.

“Our potatoes are super crispy, super delicious, and super sweet,” Wang Xinyu, vice mayor of Inner Mongolia's city of Ulanqab, praised local potatoes as he promoted the products via live streaming as a host.

Wang described the potatoes as he tasted them on the show, during which all the nearly 120,000 kilograms of potatoes were sold out.

Efforts of Inner Mongolia to boost poverty reduction via development of featured industries since 2016 have lifted 402,600 local people out of poverty, accounting for 48.9 percent of the total number of local people who have been freed from poverty.

Among all the featured industries, industries featuring local cultures of ethnic minorities in Inner Mongolia have played an important role in helping poor people overcome poverty.

Ewenki Autonomous Banner in Inner Mongolia’s city of Hulun Buir has witnessed growing dynamism of traditional handicrafts of the Ewenki ethnic group in the local people’s efforts to get rid of poverty.

The ethnic culture industry innovation park of Ewenki Autonomous Banner has housed 192 enterprises engaging in businesses with characteristics of ethnic groups, such as woodcarving of the Daur ethnic group, food of the Buryats ethnic group, and traditional local costumes.

These enterprises have covered 23 items of intangible cultural heritage and held training for nearly 300 registered poor local households last year.

Many more poor banners and counties of the region have developed special industries based on cultures of minority ethnic groups, creating a variety of poverty-relief industries involving products such as Mongolian robes, Mongolian medicine, broom seedlings and Mongolian embroidery。

A total of over 170 administrative villages in the region have tapped into the potential of the embroidery industry. More than 20,000 local people have engaged in relevant jobs of the industry, among which about 3,000 are poor people, whose annual income has been increased by about 2,000 yuan because of the industry.

Thanks to the country’s efforts to enhance transportation infrastructure across the country, high-speed trains from Beijing have been able to connect the remote Zhuozi county in Ulanqab and Beijing since 2019.

“We can get to Beijing within two hours today. Our lives are just getting different with each passing year. Our family will definitely go to visit the Palace Museum and the Summer Palace when the epidemic ends,” Liu Taiping, a local villager who lives near the train station of Zhuozi county said happily.

Liu’s family is a poor household. His wife has infantile paralysis and his daughter is still a little girl. The family of three had lived in a very poor village with harsh environment and transportation conditions.

“All the farming and breeding work was on me. I could only get 2,000 to 3,000 yuan a year, even though I worked hard all year round. Our lives were tough and hopeless,” Liu disclosed.

In 2018, Liu’s family was relocated to a community of Zhuozishan town of Zhuozi county, and the community arranged a public welfare job for Liu. He is now a sanitation worker of the community.

At the same time, Liu and his wife have been learning skills and working at a local poverty-relief workshop that produces auto cushions.

Liu and his wife can now earn more than 2,000 yuan per month in the workshop, and his daughter is now studying at a school in the county, according to Liu, who said he had never imagined that his family could one day enjoy such good life.

In fact, Zhuozi county has built a poverty-relief workshop in every community which is a relocation site of the county, and introduced companies engaging in labor-intensive businesses to the communities, thus enabling local poor households to secure jobs and incomes.

With the high-speed railway better connecting the county to the outside world, more enterprises have inspected and invested in the county, and more young people have returned to their hometown frequently.