http://www.bjreview.com MARCH 12, 2020 BEIJING REVIEW 29
¾Copyedited by Madhusudan Chaubey
Comments to [email protected]OUT OF POVERTY
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the province have been given responsibility for
poverty alleviation, with some 35,700 govern-
ment employees stationed in villages to battle
poverty. Currently, poverty alleviation achieve-
ments are an important criterion for evaluating
the government’s performance, he said.
Moreover, Shaanxi has implemented an
industrial development initiative to offer at
least one source of stable income to every
poor household with members able to work,
he said. The initiative aims to boost three
main industries, namely the fruit industry,
especially apple growing, animal husbandry
represented by dairy goat raising, and green-
house cultivation. It also encourages the
production of a variety of other specialty
products such as konjac, medicinal herbs,
walnut and jujube. Many businesses have
contributed to poverty alleviation by employ-
ing the poor, Wen said.
He said the province has taken diverse
measures to generate jobs for impoverished
persons, including setting up community-
based workshops, creating public service
jobs such as forest rangers, and exporting
labor services to other regions.
The province has created a special fund
for poverty alleviation, and partnered with
Jiangsu Province in east China and some
central government organizations and state-
owned enterprises in the battle.
Unrelenting efforts
There are still many things to do to end
poverty in Shaanxi, Wen said, adding that the
novel coronavirus epidemic has made the
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end of February, all impoverished counties in Hebei, Shanxi, Heilongjiang, Henan, Hunan,
Hainan and Shaanxi provinces, Chongqing Municipality and Tibet Autonomous Region had
shaken off poverty.
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counties, they still have some impoverished people, so the poverty alleviation efforts need to
be continued.
(Source: People’s Daily)Poverty Alleviation Progress
In addition to the remaining 183,400
impoverished people, those already out of
poverty still need to be aided to prevent
relapses. The province will continue to
boost industries and generate jobs, and will
intensify other efforts such as relocating the
impoverished living in uninhabitable areas to
places with better conditions.
On February 20, Shaanxi issued eight
measures to cope with the impact of the
epidemic on poverty alleviation. They include
medical assistance to confirmed and sus-
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helping impoverished people find jobs and
giving enterprises incentives to hire people
living in poverty.
Shaanxi had reported 245 confirmed
cases of novel coronavirus infection as of
March 2, with 209 recovered patients dis-
charged from hospital and one death. The
authorities have downgraded the epidemic
risk assessment to low for most of its urban
districts and counties and medium for only a
few.
“Amid efforts to contain the spread ofthe virus, we are pushing for the resumption
of production to complete the poverty alle-
viation tasks for this year,” Wang Taiping, an
official of Lujiaba Village in Hanzhong, said
on February 24.
While some villagers start preparations
for spring farming, others are planning to re-
turn to their jobs in other places as migrant
workers. The villagers’ committee will help
them get permits from epidemic control
agencies to travel to these places, according
to Wang.
There are more than 6 million migrant
workers from Shaanxi working in other
regions across the country, according to
Xinhua News Agency. As the epidemic situ-
ation eases, some local governments in the
province are helping migrant workers get
back to work.
On February 24, three charter planes
transported 540 migrant workers from
Hanzhong to Nantong in Jiangsu and Yiwu,
a consumer goods hub in Zhejiang Province
in east China. The government of Luonan
County in Shangluo arranged special trains
to send 2,200 migrant workers to work in
economically developed areas.
Currently, some migrant workers can-
not return to their previous jobs in Hubei,
the province hardest hit by the epidemic.
Shaanxi said it would assign work on epi-
demic prevention and control to those who
cannot find new jobs. People who want to
start up their own business will be given free
training and discounted loans.
The province will also provide subsidies
to poverty alleviation projects which are hav-
ing difficulty in selling their products. The
government is encouraging logistics enter-
prises, farmer cooperatives and e-commerce
platforms to launch marketing campaigns
for agricultural products from impoverished
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