Why should industrial poverty alleviation follow market laws?
To advance industrial poverty alleviation, the first step is to clarify its economic nature; it is essential to adhere to a market orientation, follow the laws of the market and industrial development, and identify the point where industrial projects connect with increasing the incomes of poor households.
Recently, nine departments including the Ministry of Agriculture, the National Development and Reform Commission, the Ministry of Finance, and the People's Bank of China jointly issued the Guiding Opinions on Developing Characteristic Industries in Poor Areas to Promote Targeted Poverty Alleviation, sounding the call for industrial poverty alleviation in the new era. According to the plan, through industrial support, the poverty problem of more than half of the rural poor population must be solved, which can be described as the centerpiece and main battlefield of the fight against poverty.
China's many years of poverty alleviation experience have proven that industrial poverty alleviation is the fundamental means of solving survival and development problems and the only way to escape poverty. Without the drive of industrial development, it is very difficult to escape poverty; poverty alleviation lacking industrial support is also difficult to sustain. Giving money and goods can only provide emergency relief, but establishing industries can open up sources of vitality. By achieving poverty alleviation for more than 30 million rural poor people through industrial support, there will be reliable guarantees for winning the battle against poverty.
However, the reason poor areas remain poor for a long time is that they are constrained by many factors such as resources, talent, capital, and the market, so the difficulty of industrial development can be imagined. In recent years, many places have accumulated successful experience in industrial poverty alleviation, but there have also been many lessons. Even in the same place developing the same industry, different models and different methods bring different results.
In the contiguous poverty-stricken area of the Dabie Mountains in Hubei, the same practice of raising "poverty-alleviation sheep" saw the popular Small-tailed Han sheep chosen a few years ago, but they did not adapt to the southern climate and soil and all died of illness when the weather turned hot; now local black goats are raised, which get sick less, grow quickly, and fetch a good price. Again with raising "poverty-alleviation sheep," when lambs were directly distributed to poor households, some farmers could not raise them well and simply slaughtered the sheep to sell for money; now, by supporting leading enterprises, a five-in-one targeted poverty alleviation model of "government + finance + insurance + company + poor households" has been established, with policies and banks providing subsidized loans, enterprises providing goats to poor households and offering full-process technical support, and insurance covering the bottom line, achieving a win-win situation. When handled according to industrial methods, development naturally proceeds smoothly.
Therefore, to advance industrial poverty alleviation, the first step is to clarify its economic nature; it is essential to adhere to a market orientation, follow the laws of the market and industrial development, and reasonably determine the direction, focus, and scale of industrial development according to local conditions, so as to improve the sustainability and effectiveness of industrial development. It should be based on each place's resource endowments as well as poor households' business capabilities and poverty alleviation needs, and it must not ignore reality, blindly rush in, and introduce industries that do not adapt to local conditions.
Industrial poverty alleviation must also fully embody and highlight the connotation of "industry + poverty alleviation," give play to the driving role of industry in increasing the income of poor households and helping them escape poverty, ensure that poor households have long-term stable returns, and avoid supporting agriculture without supporting the poor and developing industry without benefiting the poor. There is also experience to follow at the grassroots level on this point. Some places have changed "funds to households" into "benefits to households," providing poverty alleviation funds to cooperatives with strong driving capacity and a good industrial foundation, and converting the funds into shares quantified to poor households, so that these poor households with weak development capacity can also enjoy dividend returns. The Opinions issued this time also further clarifies that it is necessary to establish interest linkage mechanisms between poor households and industrial development entities through various forms such as shareholding systems, joint-stock cooperative systems, land trusteeship, and order-based assistance.
Industrial development in poor areas cannot be separated from the drive of leading enterprises; without leading enterprises, there is no market and no value chain. Therefore, to advance industrial poverty alleviation, attention must be paid to the driving role of new types of business entities. Mechanisms should be innovated, and large planting and breeding households, farmers' cooperatives, leading enterprises, and other new types of business entities should be encouraged to establish stable driving relationships with poor households, provide poor households with whole-industry-chain services, and effectively improve industrial value-added capacity and the capacity to absorb poor labor for employment.
To complete the poverty alleviation tasks during the "13th Five-Year Plan" period on schedule, the strength of the whole society must be mobilized. Promoting industrial poverty alleviation is also not a matter for one region or one department alone; it requires the full cooperation of governments at all levels and all departments. Only by increasing funding input for industrial poverty alleviation, improving support and guarantee systems in finance, science and technology, talent, and other aspects, and actively guiding forces from all sides to participate in industrial poverty alleviation can targeted poverty alleviation be truly achieved and the roots of poverty be pulled out.