Old revolutionary base revives amid China's poverty alleviation efforts
Pub Date:2021-02-09 14:49 Source:China.org.cn
Jinzhai county was once an important Red
Army revolutionary base in eastern China's Anhui province. It used to
be among the country's most impoverished counties, and Dawan village was
one of the county's 71 poverty-stricken villages. Dawan has a
population of 3,348, and 554 of them were registered as poor at the end
of 2014.
After years of struggle, Dawan village
has lifted itself out of poverty. The local government has taken a
series of measures, including resettling villagers, expanding health
benefits, developing the tea industry and rural tourism to tackle
poverty and improve rural residents' livelihoods.
Migration and resettlement
Before 2016, 207 households in Dawan
village had been living in rundown, brick-and-clay houses, and 18 of
them lived in houses that were 100 years old. To live in new houses has
been a lifelong dream for them.
By the latter half of 2019, four
resettlement sites had been built in Dawan village, accommodating 201
residents from 62 impoverished households. Chen Zeping was among the
first to move to the newly built community that has a better
transportation infrastructure and apartments mostly paid for by the
government.
Living in the brand new communities
with improved environment and public services, Chen and his fellow
villagers got rid of their heaviest burdens and become more confident in
building up the village.
Health plan
Tucked away in remote mountainous
areas, Dawan village did not have easy access to medical resources.
Disease and disability often caused poverty in the village. In 2014,
people who fell into poverty due to illnesses accounted for 71% of the
total poor population in the village.
Zhou Xiufeng's family is one of the
households driven into poverty by medical crises. Her father died of
stomach cancer, her mother has high blood pressure, and her daughter has
been suffering from chronic osteomyelitis for years.
To ease the burden of healthcare
expenses for impoverished residents, Jinzhai Hospital of Traditional
Chinese Medicine has entered a pairing-up program to provide Dawan
residents with healthcare assistance. Health professionals conducts
regular home visits to treat patients and ensure that healthcare
services are accessible to low-income families.
"In the past, I was like shouldering
all the burdens only by myself, and now they help me to reduce 70% to
80% of that," Zhou said. "I feel relieved."
The new healthcare system comprises
basic health insurance, serious illness insurance, and medical
assistance, and it covers all the villagers living in poverty. Under the
system, people living in poor households have only to pay a maximum of
10,000 yuan each year for medical costs.
A promise
In
2015, Yu Jing was sent to Dawan to be the team leader on poverty
alleviation. She recalled that the poverty rate of the village was as
high as 28% at that time. It dropped to 7% in 2018.
Upon
arriving in Dawan, Yu realized that resettlement alone was not enough
to keep poverty alleviation sustainable, and a long-term poverty
alleviation mechanism with a focus on industrial development must be set
up.
In the past few years, Yu
and her team took several measures of targeted poverty alleviation,
including developing the tea business, rural tourism, photovoltaic power
generation, and raising poultry, in order to provide more job
opportunities and income sources for villagers.
Dawan
now has about 200 hectares of tea plantations, and its Lu'an tea is one
of China's famous tea brands. In the first nine months of 2020, Dawan's
42 homestays and specialty stores received about 200,000 tourists. The
per capita disposable income in Dawan doubled from 2014 to 2019,
reaching 14,236 yuan (US$2,205).
"I feel that people are happier, and everyone realizes the changes in their life brought by the Party's policies," Yu said.
Yu
once made a promise that she would not withdraw from her post until all
the families in the village were lifted out of extreme poverty.