Poverty Alleviation and Development in Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region

　　【Overview】 Located in northwest China, Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region (hereinafter referred to as Ningxia) covers a total area of ​​66,400 square kilometers and has five prefecture-level cities and 22 counties (cities, districts). It has 8 national key counties for poverty alleviation with a population of 2.38 million, accounting for 38% of the total population of Ningxia, which are part of the country's poorest areas and the main battlefield for poverty alleviation and development in Ningxia.

　　In 2009, according to the deployments of the central government and Ningxia Party Committee and Government, Ningxia increased efforts on the integration of funds from various departments and vigorously promoted the entire village advancement, industrial development, labor force transfer and training, relocation-based poverty reduction, mutual funds and social poverty alleviation. As a result, the process of infrastructure construction in rural poor areas was significantly speeded up, ​​considerable progress was made in social development, the trend of ecological deterioration was effectively contained, the rural per capita net income in eight key counties reached 2,912 Yuan, with an increase of 13%, and the living standard of rural poor was improved significantly.

　　【Investment of anti-poverty funds】 In 2009, 85.50 million Yuan of funds were integrated (of which 10.50 million was allocated by LGOP) for pilot projects of mutual funds. In accordance with the government investment standard of 200,000 Yuan for each small village and 300,000 Yuan for each big village, based on the investment to 108 pilot projects launched in the first three years, Ningxia newly launched 320 project villages, and the number of mutual fund project villages reached 428, accounting for 30.5% of the total poor villages in the regions. The projects’ influence covered 21 counties (cities, districts) in Ningxia and the total funds amounted to 154.46 million Yuan (government investment: 105.94 million Yuan; mass investment: 48.52 million Yuan). More than 120 million Yuan of micro-credit loan was issued with repayment rate of 100% and more than 40,000 rural families joined the mutual funds.

　　【Entire Village Advancement】 In 2009, 300 million Yuan was put in entire village advancement, of which nearly 200 million Yuan was from various departments. The average investment to each village exceeded 1 million Yuan and the priority was given to 228 “three guarantee” villages. Besides, Ningxia further strengthened the supervision and inspection on the “county-based entire village and contiguous development through fund integration” in Longde, Haiyuan and Tongxin County and approved the pilot projects in four counties (districts), namely Yanchi, Yuanzhou, Pengyang and Xiji. According to the inspection, smooth progress had been made in the pilot projects and good results had been achieved.

　　【Poverty alleviation by relocation】 In 2009, Ningxia completed the task of immigration settlement for more than 10,000 families and 57,000 people in the ecological poverty alleviation, and launched the pilot projects for relocation of migrant workers with investment of 14 million. 1,000 apartments were built for migrant workers and 1,000 rural families and more than 4,000 people settled down.

　　【Poverty alleviation training】 In 2009, a total of 8 million Yuan of “three west” (“three west” areas refer to: the central arid regions of Gansu Province represented by Dingxi, Hexi Corridor region and Xihaigu in Ningxia Hui Autonomous region) funds and financial anti-poverty funds were integrated for the trainings of 5,000 “two kinds of backward students” in impoverished areas. In fact, 5,687 students received the trainings. In addition, Ningxia arranged 250,000 Yuan of “three west” funds to support labor export associations, service companies and labor brokers. Nearly 630,000 labors of the eight national key counties and Hongsipu Development Zone were transferred throughout the whole year and the labor service revenue was nearly 1.8 billion Yuan.

　　【Poverty alleviation by industrialization】 The State Council decided to extend the service life of the “three west” funds and increase the funds. On this basis, aiming to build “three one million-mu projects”, Ningxia further increased support for facility farming and breeding. In 2009, it integrated 23.77 million Yuan of “three west” funds and Fujian-Ningxia cooperation funds for the development of competitive featured industries and modern efficient facility agriculture and required poverty alleviation leading enterprises to issue discount loans of 200 million Yuan.

　　【Comprehensive governance of special poverty-stricken areas】 In 2009, giving play to the leverage role of the 15 million Yuan of development funds for the central arid regions in Ningxia allocated by the State Council, Ningxia absorbed nearly 100 million Yuan of industrial funds to participate in the industrial development and agricultural infrastructure construction in the central arid regions, focusing on support for the regional featured industries such as selenium sand melon and wolfberry, and the facility agricultural and breeding industry as well.

　　【Employment of college graduates in impoverished areas】 In 2009, Ningxia selected more than 1,400 college students to serve with eight key counties and Hongsipu Development Zone, of which 250 were members of the working group on poverty alleviation and 45 were involved in the “village-level officer program”.

　　【Social poverty alleviation】  1．Fujian-Ningxia pairing-off poverty alleviation. It successively held forums for sending cadres of Fujian in Ningxia, seminars for the entrepreneur representatives of Fujian in Ningxia and seminars for Juncao production technicians sent by Fujian to Ningxia, and organized some leading enterprises in agricultural industrialization and poverty alleviation to Fujian and Taiwan for learn their experience in project construction. Fujian Province also organized some leading entrepreneurs in agricultural industrialization to conduct field research in Ningxia and Hualin Vegetables Co., Ltd. successfully settled down in Xiji County of Ningxia. Meanwhile, it developed the air routes from Yinchuan to Xiamen and From Yinchuan to Fuzhou, and successfully held the Thirteenth Conference for Fujian and Ningxia to learn from and help each other in the cooperation.

　　2．Fixed-point poverty alleviation by central organs (enterprises).  In 2009, Ningxia further strengthened the contacts with the central organs (enterprises) assigned to support the poverty alleviation in key counties in the autonomous region and strived for a total of 7.55 million Yuan of anti-poverty funds from them.

　　3．Social poverty alleviation in the autonomous region. While receiving continuous support from the district, city and county-level party and government organs and state-owned enterprises, Ningxia mobilized the army (including armed forces) to participate in helping-the-poor and a total of 34.88 million Yuan of money and material donations were issued by all circles of society throughout the year.

　　【Poverty alleviation publicity】 Taking the opportunity of the 60th anniversary of the new China, Ningxia further increased efforts on poverty advocacy and successively opened 21 special pages for poverty alleviation publicity in the Xinhua News Agency, China Economic Times, China's Poverty Alleviation Magazine, Yearbook of Ningxia, Ningxia Daily, Huaxing Times, Ningxia Pictorial, Charming Ningxia, Xinzhi Newspaper and other media, announced more than 70 pieces of news in Ningxia TV, Ningxia Daily and Xinzhi Newspaper, produced one TV program, printed five briefings of "Information on Poverty Alleviation in Ningxia", made more than 40 display boards and assisted China Association for Poverty Alleviation and Development in model publicity.

　　【Poverty alleviation measures】  1．Improve the poverty alleviation fund management mechanism. To further strengthen the supervision of various anti-poverty funds, improve capital efficiency and ensure the achievement of poverty alleviation and development goals on schedule, in 2009, Ningxia established the joint conference system for anti-poverty fund supervision under the leadership of the Poverty Alleviation Office, participated by the autonomous region’s Supervision Department, Development and Reform Commission, Department of Finance, Department of Auditing, Ethnic Affairs Commission and the Office for Rectifying, successfully held the first joint conference and organized supervisions and inspections on the use of anti-poverty funds and the construction of poverty alleviation projects from time to time.

　　2．Implement the immigration-related requirements of LGOP. In 2009, while conducting poverty alleviation by ecological development, based on the construction of the city zone along the Yellow River, various industrial parks and the production bases of agricultural industrialization, Ningxia launched poverty alleviation by relocation of migrant workers and decided to relocate 200,000 migrant workers within five years, mainly to solve the settlement, children’s education and social security problems of the migrant workers.

　　3．Increase investment to provide guarantee for poverty alleviation and development work. First, it launched the pilot projects of the “county-based entire village advancement and contiguous development by integrating resources”. In accordance with the principle of “same channels, fixed direction, concentrated use, taking assigned responsibility and independent contribution”, Ningxia launched contiguous development projects in 67 villages of four counties (districts), namely Xiji, Yuanzhou, Pengyang and Yanchi, which significantly accelerated the pace of shaking off poverty and getting rich of the masses. Secondly, it organized troops, armed forces and enterprises to support key villages, expanded the channels for social poverty alleviation and further strengthened the social poverty alleviation work.

　　4．Full implementation of the mutual fund projects. The government decided to, from 2009, make the mutual fund projects cover all the 1,404 impoverished villages in Ningxia in three years and raised the government investment for each village from 150,000-200,000 Yuan to 200,000-300,000 Yuan.