Linking villages and linking households is a major innovative measure in the poverty alleviation strategy

Since the mid-20th century, countries around the world and relevant international organizations have successively proposed and implemented quite a few anti-poverty strategies. Among them, the main anti-poverty strategies are the following:

First, the economic growth strategy. What some developing countries implemented in the 1950s to 1960s was mainly this strategy. Its basic meaning is to solve the poverty problem by promoting economic growth. The two "Development Decade" plans successively proposed and implemented by the United Nations starting in the 1960s were also concrete practices of this economic growth strategy. Although the implementation of this strategy enabled many developing countries to achieve rapid economic growth, it did not solve the poverty problem as expected.

Second, the redistribution strategy. According to the different objects of redistribution, this strategy can be divided into two specific strategies, namely the marginal redistribution strategy and the productive asset redistribution strategy. The advocate of the former was the World Bank Development Research Center led by Hollis Chenery, and they emphasized that the main object of redistribution is the incremental part of economic growth, that is, redistribution in the general marginal sense. Through this kind of redistribution, part of the economic increment is transferred from the rich to the poor, thereby eliminating excessive disparities between rich and poor and achieving the strategic goal of anti-poverty. The core of the latter can be summarized as "redistribution before growth," and it emphasizes redistribution of the stock of assets that can be used for economic growth, that is, distribution first and growth afterward. The premise of this strategy is to ensure that the poor obtain basic public services. Because the huge public service expenditures of many countries are basically monopolized by the upper and middle strata of society, to reverse this situation, it is necessary to ensure that plans such as housing subsidies, education expenditures, and health care benefit the poor. This requires reconfiguring public consumption and changing many of the government's investment plans. This strategy also emphasizes that the poor must participate in the development process. Because a society in which the rich hold power cannot truly take the interests of the poor to heart, the poor must participate in the development process.

Third, the Green Revolution strategy. The vast majority of the poor in today's world live in rural areas, so developing the rural economy has become an inevitable choice for anti-poverty strategies. The Green Revolution strategy attempts to solve the food problem and the rural poverty problem by introducing, cultivating, and promoting high-yield crop varieties and using biotechnology to increase crop yields and develop rural productivity.

Fourth, the social service strategy. If relatively large investment is not made in the human capital of the poor, then in the long run efforts to alleviate poverty cannot succeed. Only by investing in human capital, especially in education, can the roots of poverty be eradicated. Therefore, after the 1970s, people gradually shifted the strategic focus of anti-poverty to the provision of health, nutrition, education, and other social services, and implemented it as an important social policy of government departments.

Fifth, the "two-factor" development strategy. In the 1990s, the emphasis of anti-poverty strategies shifted once again. In the "1990 World Development Report," the World Bank proposed a development strategy containing two equally important factors. The first factor is to prompt the poor to use their most abundant asset, namely labor, for productive activities; for this purpose, the government is required to use policies to constrain and stimulate markets, social and political organizations, infrastructure, technology, and so on. The second factor is to provide the poor with basic social services, among which primary health care, nutrition, and primary education are especially important. The report holds that these two factors complement each other, and success is impossible if either one is missing.

The above anti-poverty strategies have been practically applied in the anti-poverty efforts of some countries and regions and have also achieved certain results, but none of them has been able to fundamentally eliminate poverty, which also shows that anti-poverty will be a long-term and arduous task. In response to the poverty problem in Gansu, Secretary Wang Sanyun proposed the "linking villages and linking households" poverty alleviation strategy. This is a major innovation in the poverty alleviation strategy, and its positive significance is far-reaching.

First, it further tightened the relationship between the Party and the masses, consolidated the Party's governing foundation, and found an effective form of realization for the Party's mass line. First, it enhanced the service awareness of Party members and cadres. By observing the people's conditions, relieving the people's worries, staying grounded, and tempering their resolve, household-linking cadres gained a true understanding of village and people's conditions and a genuine feel for the people's wellbeing, and their ability to serve the masses was noticeably enhanced. Second, it improved the service capacity of Party members and cadres. Household-linking cadres entered villages and households, explained policies face to face, listened to public opinion and solved problems on the front line, received education, tempered their will, and improved their policy level. Participation in the dual-linking action turned more cadres into "people who understand" policies and regulations, "people who know" social conditions and public opinion, and "close friends" who ease emotions. Third, it tightened Party-masses and cadre-masses relations. People's livelihood is linked to people's hearts, and people's livelihood unites people's hearts. As long as one does a little something for ordinary people, they remember it in their hearts and write it on their faces, and treat one as family. The down-to-earth work style and professional guidance of household-linking cadres gained the recognition of villagers, and cadres and the masses formed a deep friendship, opening a new chapter in cadre-masses relations.

Second, linking villages and linking households also provided an effective form of realization for targeted poverty alleviation. In the "Opinions on Innovating Mechanisms and Solidly Promoting Rural Poverty Alleviation and Development Work," the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and the State Council proposed establishing a targeted poverty alleviation work mechanism. So-called targeted poverty alleviation means that the state formulates unified methods for identifying poverty alleviation targets, and each province (autonomous region, municipality directly under the Central Government), on the basis of existing work, adheres to the effective connection between poverty alleviation and development and the rural minimum living security system, and, according to the principles of taking the county as the unit, scale control, responsibility at different levels, precise identification, and dynamic management, establishes files and cards for each poor village and poor household and builds a nationwide poverty alleviation information network system. Special poverty alleviation measures must connect with the results of poverty identification, deeply analyze the causes of poverty, formulate assistance measures village by village and household by household, concentrate efforts on support, truly help the genuinely poor and truly alleviate poverty, and ensure that the goal of stable poverty elimination is achieved within the prescribed time. In carrying out the work of linking villages and linking households in our province, poverty alleviation work has become more flexible and targeted, and its role is also similar to advancing targeted poverty alleviation.

Third, in the activity of linking villages and linking households, all localities explored new models of escaping poverty and achieving prosperity with their own characteristics according to actual conditions. 1. The "four ones" mutual-help and mutual-assistance model. Jingchuan County fully gave play to the exemplary and leading role of the rural "first group to become rich" and explored and formed the "four ones" mutual-help and mutual-assistance model (one Party member prosperity household helps one Party member in difficulty, one industry prosperity household supports one poor farming household, one association leader strengthens one income-increasing industry, and one private entrepreneur assists one extremely poor farming household). 2. The financial support for agriculture model. In order to solve the biggest difficulty of rural fund shortage, during the dual-linking action the provincial finance and financial departments joined hands, used fiscal funds to leverage credit funds, and creatively launched a variety of new rural financial operation models featuring positive interaction of funds, such as "dual-linking beneficial agriculture loans," poverty alleviation mutual-aid funds, and women's microcredit; Shiyang Village in Zhuanglang County explored and launched the "four-party linkage" financial support-for-agriculture and assistance-to-agriculture model involving the government, banks, leading enterprises, and farming households, opening a new path for solving the difficulty farmers have in obtaining loans. 3. The internal-external combination and paired assistance model. First, cross-provincial paired assistance. Wushan County established a sister-county and sister-city relationship with Nan'an City of Fujian Province, and Zhongjiacha Village in Huining County and Beishun Village in Wushan County established friendly co-construction village relationships with Rongzhong Village in Nan'an City of Fujian Province, taking the lead in the province in exploring and forming the model of "the east helping the west, those who became rich first helping those who became rich later, county and village pairing, and striving for moderate prosperity together." Second, intra-provincial paired assistance. Gaozhaigou Village in Mubo Town, Huan County, Qingyang City established a friendly assistance village relationship with Qianjin Village in Ganzhou District, Zhangye City, forming a "one-to-one" paired assistance model. Qianjin Village specially dispatched more than 20 technical personnel to provide on-site guidance to Gaozhaigou Village in planting off-season facility melons and vegetables, providing strong technical support for the rapid economic development of Gaozhaigou Village. 4. The model of promoting rural grassroots organization construction. Beishun Village in Wushan County explored and formed the Party organization setup model of "service-oriented Party committee + distinctive Party branch + industry-oriented Party small group," the Party member education and management model of "setting posts and defining responsibilities + star-level management," and the village-level management and operation model of "village Party committee + village committee + village supervision committee"; Huan County, in the process of developing Party members, implemented the "dual recommendation and four priorities" model (recommendation by the masses, recommendation by Party members, and giving priority to conveying the spirit of higher-level directives to Party members, giving priority to reporting important work to Party members, giving priority to feeding back work progress to Party members, and giving priority to soliciting Party members' opinions on major decisions); Lintao County and Shandan County each formed, through absorbing capable people into village leadership teams, a "capable-person-driven" model that is even more distinctive and has notable results.