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The 50-year-old was a migrant worker in Jiangsu province in the 1990s
and then returned to his hometown to run a restaurant in 2010. In 2011, he established Longhui Pencil, a pencil manufacturing plant
in his hometown. After years of development, Zhu said, his business had
finally got on the right track and he wanted to contribute more to his
hometown's development. In 2016, Zhu joined the government's poverty alleviation efforts. The government has been helping poverty-stricken households in many
ways, such as providing affordable healthcare services and subsidies for
youth education, but employment is seen as one of the most effective
measures. "What I can do is provide jobs, which will give them more confidence and decency," Zhu said. Many low-end manufacturing employers attach more importance to
competitiveness, which means that younger, healthier and better educated
people would have a greater chance to get a job. "It's a fact that poverty-stricken villagers are usually the seniors,
less-educated or even illiterate, or disabled," said Zhu, who had been
recruiting such people since 2016. Of his 243 employees, 68 are from families registered by the government as key households for poverty alleviation efforts. With the factory's annual output value surpassing 100 million yuan
($15 million) last year, Zhu spent more than 20 million yuan to buy wood
from local villagers and pay workers' salaries last year. "We have employed more than 120 people from poverty-stricken
households so far," Zhu said. "With employment, they have all risen out
of poverty, which is a happy achievement for us."
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