Poverty alleviation in Bijie City turns poor villages into green, prosperous and beautiful places; planning rural development projects is very important
"The Five Ridges wind like gentle ripples, and the majestic Wumeng rolls like clay balls."
From early 1935 to 1936, the Central Red Army and the Red Second and Sixth Army Groups successively passed through Bijie City in Guizhou Province, situated among the Wumeng Mountains, carrying out revolutionary activities, establishing revolutionary political power, and sowing the seeds of revolution.
The majestic Wumeng Mountains not only caused considerable difficulties for the Red Army during the Long March, but also long affected local people's efforts to escape poverty and achieve prosperity.
"Farming to the very edge, clearing wasteland up to the sky. Planting a whole hillside in spring, harvesting only a small basket in autumn." To survive, the people once had no choice but to destroy forests and clear wasteland, falling into a vicious cycle of "the poorer, the more reclaimed; the more reclaimed, the poorer," causing large-scale soil erosion. The result was "only mountains visible, no trees; only rocks, no land." Forest coverage dropped to 14.94%, and the absolute poverty population reached as high as 65.4%.
Recalling the days of the past, 90-year-old Hou Mingyang from Jiming Sansheng Village told reporters, "Back then we went hungry every year; if it wasn't a grain shortage here, it was a broken cooking stove there."
Waiting and enduring bitterness led nowhere.
In June 1988, with the approval of the State Council, the Bijie Experimental Zone was established with the theme of "development-oriented poverty alleviation, ecological construction, and population control." From then on, the people of Bijie embarked on a new journey of both escaping poverty and preserving green mountains and clear waters.
On September 23, a reporter from Economic Daily came to Chuanyan Village, Yangchang Town, Dafang County, Bijie City. Green mountains stretched afar, streams murmured, rows of small buildings lined clean cement roads, and tourists strolled through from time to time.
"We have all benefited from the ecology." Chen Gang, director of the Chuanyan Village Committee, told reporters that last year the village's per capita net income for farmers exceeded 7,100 yuan.
Chuanyan Village was once like most places in Bijie: the people survived by clearing wasteland, and forest coverage at its lowest was less than 10%. "On sunny days the sun scorches the hilltops; when it rains, half the cliff washes away." The increasingly barren land made it hard for farmers to support themselves by farming alone.
In the mid-1980s, Chuanyan Village suffered two mudslide disasters, destroying houses and causing villager casualties. The disasters made the people realize the importance of planting trees.
With strong support from the local government, Chuanyan Village began implementing the Grain for Green program in the early 1990s. At present, all of the village's more than 4,400 mu of sloping farmland with slopes above 25 degrees has been returned to forest, and forest coverage exceeds 70%.
Focusing on helping the people escape poverty and achieve prosperity, Chuanyan Village made the most of its "mountains," actively developing under-forest economy, planting Chinese medicinal herbs, raising cattle and sheep, and opening agritainment businesses, leading to good days amid green mountains and clear waters. In 2014, Chuanyan Village was rated a "National Ecological Civilization Village."
The transformation of Chuanyan is just a microcosm of Bijie's efforts to advance ecological construction and fight the battle against poverty.
Since its establishment, the Bijie Experimental Zone has made ecological construction a top priority, successively implementing more than 10 ecological construction projects including the Grain for Green program, natural forest resource protection, and comprehensive rocky desertification control. A total of more than 20 million mu of afforestation has been completed, with forest coverage increasing by more than 1 percentage point annually on average. By the end of 2015, the city's forest coverage reached 48.04%.
Focusing on the organic combination of ecological construction and poverty alleviation, Bijie explored the "Five Sons Achieve Success" development model: planting trees on hilltops to "wear a hat," returning sloping farmland to forest and grassland and planting trees on mountainsides to "fasten a belt," planting forage grass and green manure on sloping land to "lay a blanket," building basic farmland at the foot of the mountains to "harvest grain," and developing diversified businesses to "grab money." The former "poor backwater" gradually became "green, prosperous and beautiful."
After entering the new century, Bijie City focused on making the most of its "mountain classic," playing its "specialty card," and vigorously developing its specialty economy. Hezhang walnuts, Dafang gastrodia, Weining potatoes, Zhijin bamboo shoots and other specialty agricultural products from Bijie have gained some renown and become good helpers for farmers escaping poverty and achieving prosperity. According to statistics, during the "12th Five-Year Plan" period, a total of 1.91 million people in the city were lifted out of poverty.
Although the achievements are remarkable, for Bijie, the situation of a large poor population, a wide poverty scope, and deep poverty has not yet been fundamentally changed. The task of poverty alleviation remains arduous, and ecological construction is still underway.
On the wall of the Linkou Town Government Office in Qixingguan District, the reporter saw a battle map for poverty alleviation, listing a timetable, specifying responsible persons, with each of the 6 poor villages contracted by a town official.
"Villages don't escape poverty, officials don't decouple." Zhao Jiang, a member of the Party Committee of Linkou Town, told the Economic Daily reporter, "We will never let a single poor person fall behind on the road to a moderately prosperous society in all respects."