Poverty Alleviation and Development in Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region

　　【Overview】 Located in China's northwest border, Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region (hereinafter referred to as "Xinjiang") covers an area of ​​1.6649 million square kilometers and has 14 prefectures (states, cities) and 99 counties (cities, districts). As of the end of 2008, it had a population of 21.3081 million. Xinjiang has 30 key counties (cities) for poverty alleviation and development, including 27 national key counties and 3 regional key counties, and has 3606 impoverished villages and 2.27 million poor people. 2668 poverty-stricken villages have basically completed the entire village advancement projects, but more efforts need to be put on the poverty alleviation in 938 poor villages under harsh natural conditions that live in deep poverty.

　　【Investment of anti-poverty funds】 In 2009, the three types of anti-poverty funds invested by the state and Xinjiang amounted to 2.61 billion Yuan, of which 650 million Yuan was financial anti-poverty funds, 220 million Yuan was work-relief funds and 1.74 billion Yuan was credit loan funds. County financial departments put in 148 million Yuan and social forces invested 542 million Yuan, both with a significant increase. The rural per capita net income of the 30 key counties reached 2978 Yuan, 4.7 percentage points higher than the region’s average.

　　【Entire Village Advancement】 In order to achieve the objectives of “five accesses (access to water, electricity, roads, telephone line, radio and TV program)”, “five guarantees (education, medical security, technology and cultural room, collective economic income and powerful village-level leadership)” and “five abilities (with safe drinking water, electricity, at least one production project that make stable income, affordable house and timely training and information) in entire village advancement, Xinjiang strengthened the fund integration, guided the fund projects and social resources to give priority to poverty alleviation in impoverished villages. Through entire village advancement, it strived to improve the production and living conditions of poverty-stricken villages and completed the entire village advancement projects in 345 poor villages.

270, 000 poor people received effective support and got the capacity of self-development; 345 poor villages completed the entire village advancement program, including 60 “three guarantee” impoverished villages. A total of 2668 poor villages were involved in the entire village advancement program, accounting for 70% of the total poverty-stricken villages, and all the “three guarantee” villages were covered by the program.

　　【Poverty alleviation training】 First, promote practical agricultural technology. Through training, it strived to enhance the enthusiasm and initiative of more farmers and herdsmen to learn and use technologies, aiming to make at least one member of each family master one or two practical agricultural technologies. Secondly, organize labor transfer trainings. According to the market demand, the government organized order trainings and multi-layer, multi-form and multi-channel large-scale labor transfer trainings. Thirdly, organize poverty alleviation management training. To enhance the overall level of the poverty alleviation system and improve the business ability of the leaders at all levels, relying on the regional training bases, Xinjiang organized trainings for the poverty alleviation management and a thousand village committee directors, allocated 22 million Yuan of financial anti-poverty funds, of which 17 million Yuan was financial anti-poverty training funds, and 5 million Yuan (including newly added anti-poverty funds of 2 million Yuan) was put in by the “Rain Plan” demonstration bases of LGOP and the labor transfer training bases of Xinjiang Poverty Alleviation Office. It organized trainings for 410,000 cadres and masses from poor areas, including 1545 poverty alleviation cadres, practical agricultural technology trainings for 111,000 people, labor transfer skills trainings for 45,000 people, and labor transfer guidance trainings for 250,000 person-times.

　　【Poverty alleviation by industrialization】Taking industrial development as a major measure for poverty alleviation and development, it mainly supported the development of high-quality featured fruit and forest industry, high-quality animal husbandry, facility agriculture, courtyard economy, local featured ethnic handicraft, inferior land governance and water-saving projects to promote the formation and development of featured competitive industries and leading industries in impoverished areas. Through supporting the development of poverty alleviation leading enterprises, it enhanced the driving force of the enterprises to make poor farmers and herdsmen shake off poverty and get rich. The number of national and regional poverty alleviation leading enterprises reached 128, of which 18 were national leading enterprises which helped 600,000 rural families to achieve per capita net income growth of 315 Yuan. 137 farmers’ mutual aid organizations were set up in key counties and 77,000 poor families participated in the organizations.

　　【Pilot projects of poverty alleviation and development】  1. Pilot projects for contiguous development. It further promoted the concentrated contiguous poverty alleviation and development in three areas in the south of Xinjiang, extended the results of the pilot projects in Luopu County to ten key counties (cities), and concentrated the pro-poor policy, funds and resources to fully implement the concentrated contiguous development and poverty alleviation with infrastructure construction, industry fostering, social security, quality improvement and organization guarantee as the contents, aiming to put more funds to impoverished areas. It had an obvious radiation effect.

2. Pilot projects for poverty alleviation in border areas. It continued to promote the implementation of pilot projects for poverty alleviation in Aheqi County and put forward the poverty alleviation mechanism for border areas featured the linkage of Line 1, Line 2 and Line 3, initially forming the basic experience of "one center", "two targets" and "three changes" (that is: focusing on people's livelihood, the development of industry and boosting urban growth by promoting the development of border areas and counties; targeting at border line and rural areas; aiming to change the situations in villages, households and border line). Good results have been achieved in the pilot projects. A total of 280 million Yuan was put in and 153 border poverty alleviation projects were implemented to solve the urgent problems of farmers and herdsmen, especially border residents in food, education, seeing a doctor, difficulties in roads and industrial development and achieve the integrated promotion of border areas and inland regions and coordinated development of urban and rural areas in the counties. As a result, there was a significant increase in the income of border people and the capacity of those responsible for border safeguarding.

3. Pilot projects for relocation-based poverty alleviation in high and cold mountain areas. Based on the special poverty situations in high and cold mountain areas such as Kunlun Mountain area, Tianshan Mountian area and AletaiMoutain area, Xinjiang continued to carry out pilot projects for relocation-based poverty alleviation, allocated 288 million Yuan for relocation-based poverty alleviation, averagely 182,000 Yuan for each family, and relocated 1,580 households and 7,742 people in total.

4. Pilot projects for mutual funds. It allocated 20.50 million Yuan of financial anti-poverty funds to expand the pilot mutual fund scale in impoverished villages. The pilot projects were launched in 183 poor villages of 19 counties (cities) and nearly 10,000 rural families joined in the funds, which alleviated the scarcity of financial network and the serious shortage of financial supply in rural areas.

5. Pilot projects for the effective linkage between “two systems”. It launched the pilot projects for the effective linkage between the rural minimum living security system and pro-poor policies in Moyu County and Jimunai County. Jointly with the Civil Affairs Bureau, Finance Bureau, the National Bureau of Statistics Xinjiang Survey Group and the Disabled Persons' Federation, to achieve the overall objectives of the pilot projects, adhering to the ideology of "scientific management, standardized operation, interconnection and full coverage", Xinjiang Poverty Alleviation Office conducted household survey on the 449,000 agricultural people in 405 administrative villages of 22 key towns in the two pilot counties and identified a total of 203,600 rural objects of poverty alleviation, accounting for 45.2% of the total agricultural population of the pilot counties, including 138,500 low-income farmers and 65,100 overlapped objects of poverty alleviation and the minimum living security system, respectively accounting for 68% and 32% of the rural poor. It established electronic records for the objects of poverty alleviation and the minimum living security system among the 203,600 identified poor, with filing rate of 79.1%, and determined 6,322 projects to be supported, which will benefit 41,200 rural families and 200,000 people involved in rural poverty alleviation.

　　【Social poverty alleviation】 A total of 6,520 units were assigned the task of poverty alleviation of poverty-stricken villages, including the central organs and the regional, prefecture, county and city-level enterprises and institutions, and a total of 419 million Yuan was issued for 3,606 impoverished villages. They introduced 261 poverty alleviation projects, five enterprises and 95 technicians; dispatched 9,292 sending cadres to the poor villages; helped the villages build 9162 earthquake proofing houses, 53 village-level offices, 241 clinics and 212 cultural rooms, newly built and repaired 120 schools; provided financial aid for 4,770 poor students; held 6,210 various trainings for 174,000 person-times for poor farmers and herdsmen, and dispatched 53,000 labors as well.

　　【Poverty alleviation measures】 1．Implement the "commander responsibility system" to promote poverty alleviation and development. With overall planning focusing on poverty alleviation and development, poor areas practiced the "commander responsibility system" to promote the poverty reduction, took the three regions in the south of Xinjiang, high and cold mountain areas and border poor rural areas as the main battlefield for poverty alleviation and development, gave priority to these areas in the allocation of resources and increased anti-poverty funds to enhance the pro-poor effects. Based on the focus work of poverty reduction, they started industrial poverty alleviation and resource integration, deepened the pilot projects for poverty alleviation, strengthened the driving force of demonstration projects and carried out the activities of “poverty alleviation and development year of efficiency” to greatly promote the poverty alleviation and development.

　　2．Implement entire village advancement to improve the production and living conditions in impoverished villages. In accordance with the village-level poverty alleviation and development program and the entire village advancement model of “five accesses”, “five possessions” and “five abilities”, it integrated the funds and strengthened the infrastructure and social construction in key villages through entire village advancement.

　　3．Strengthen poverty alleviation by industrialization to ensure the stable income growth of poor farmers and herdsmen. According to the requirements of “income growth projects for families, leading industries for villages and leading enterprises for counties” in poverty alleviation by industrialization, based on the construction of “four bases” – grain base, cotton base, fruit base and animal husbandry base, it mainly supported the development of high-quality featured fruit and forest industry, high-quality animal husbandry, facility agriculture, courtyard economy, local featured ethnic handicraft, inferior land governance and water-saving projects to promote the development of featured competitive industries and leading industries in impoverished areas; It focused on fostering and boosting leading enterprises and giving full play to their radiation and leading role in helping featured leading industries in poor areas. Through supporting the development of leading enterprises, it promoted the economic development in impoverished areas and steadily increased the income of the farmers and herdsmen in poor areas.

　　4．Carry out labor transfer trainings to enhance the self-development ability of farmers and herdsmen. According to the principle of government guidance, market operation, department cooperation and benefiting poor farmers, it implemented practical technical trainings for one million people in impoverished areas, organized multi-form, multi-layer and multi-channel labor transfer trainings, completed practical agricultural technical trainings for 428,000 people to further improve the self-development ability of the poor, and implemented the training program for “a thousand village committee directors”.

5. Implement migration-based poverty alleviation projects to steadily promote the anti-poverty work in special areas. For the poor living in harsh conditions, combining the regional development, land governance and ecological construction projects, on a voluntary basis among the masses, it actively and steadily carried out the poverty alleviation by relocation. For high and cold mountain areas not suitable for people’s living, on a voluntary basis among the masses, it conducted organized, planned migration-based poverty alleviation in various forms by stages based on the actual situation to ensure the successful relocation and ensure the immigrants would be able to stay in the new villages and get rich. In Kunlun Mountain areas, Tianshan Mountain areas and Aletai Mountain areas, it launched pilot projects for relocation of poor herdsmen.

6. Increased efforts on social poverty alleviation to form a grand pattern of poverty alleviation. A total of 6,432 central, regional, prefecture and county (city)-level units and departments were involved in the fixed-point poverty alleviation. They actively helped the poor villages to develop production, solved the difficulties of farmers and herdsmen in production and living and played an important role in the fixed-point poverty alleviation. Social poverty alleviation became a backbone force in the anti-poverty work and a “large-scale poverty alleviation” under the leadership of government and poverty alleviation departments featured linkage of various sectors and public participation has been formed. Meanwhile, the poverty alleviation areas for foreign investment are being constantly expanded and IFAD put in 68.23 million Yuan for the projects in Xinjiang.