Poverty Alleviation and Development in Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps

　　【Overview】 Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps has 58 border farms and 19 poor corps farms in the southern part of Xinjiang (hereinafter referred to as the poor farms), scattered in 37 counties (cities) of 10 prefectures (states) in Xinjiang. It has a population of 635,000, of which 155,000 are the working staffs, covers land area of ​​3.438 million hectares, including arable land of 409,000 hectares and grassland area of ​​1.61 million hectares. In 2009, its GDP reached 9.01 billion Yuan, the GDP of the primary, secondary and tertiary industry was respectively 5.54 billion Yuan, 1.55 billion Yuan and 1.92 billion Yuan, and the per capita GDP was 14,189 Yuan.

　　In 2009, the total sown area (including multiple cropping) of the poor farms was more than 480,000 hectares, including sown area of grain, cotton, oilseeds and sugar of more than 150,000 hectares, 107,000 hectares, 45,000 hectares, 9,422 hectares respectively, of which the outputs reached 1.098 million tons, 234,000 tons, 119,000 tons and 656,000 tons respectively. The output of meat, milk and eggs was respectively 88,000 tons, 77,000 tons and 10,000 tons, the orchard area was ​​41,467 hectares and fruit output was 331,000 tons.

　　There are now 193 primary and secondary schools and 110,000 primary and middle school students in the poor farms. The corps all passed the “two basic” inspection and acceptance. In the poor farms, 26 hospitals were established according to the county-level standard and 46 public health centers were set up based on the town-level standard, and 747 company clinics and 72 disease prevention and control agencies were set up as well, achieving the goal of “universal access to primary health care” on the farms. A total of 34 cultural centers and 158 company activity rooms were set up on the poor farms. 38% of the residents on border farmers had access to CATV programs and 78% of the residents on the poor farms had access to radio and TV programs. The programs are of few types and there are relatively few national language programs.

　　In 2009, based on the implementation of the “Opinions of the Corps’ Party Committee and the Corps on Deepening the Reforms of the Farms”, it established the basic farm operation system with "land contracting, property rights to families, unified supply of agricultural materials, and product purchase based on orders" as the main contents, and clarifies to reduce burden on staffs, which mobilized the enthusiasm of the staffs and the masses and increased the income of the staffs. Through administrative reforms, personnel reassignments, streamlining government organs and strengthening budgets, it reduced the expenditure and administrative costs to explore a long-term efficient mechanism.

　　【Agricultural structure adjustment】 In 2009, the poor farms built, with the anti-poverty funds, anti-seepage channels of 14.64 kilometers, newly dug drainage channels of 407.66 kilometers, developed sprinkler irrigation area of ​​1,773 hectares, fruit area of ​​320 hectares and reservoir area of agricultural standardization of 22,000 square meters, and built two pig breeding bases as well. Adhering to the general principle of "reducing cotton planting area but increasing livestock breeding and grain and fruit growing area", the poor farms developed pollution-free agricultural products and featured farm produce, while the border farms in the northern areas develop animal husbandry, which optimized the agricultural structure of the farms, increased the income of the staffs and achieved the objective of growing by 8% at the beginning of the year.

　　【Poverty alleviation training】 In 2009, focusing on technology and education development, the corps introduced a number of improved species and promoted a series of advanced practical technologies to play its leading role in demonstration of science and technology. While implementing poverty alleviation by science and technology, the poor farms took it as an important part of the poverty alleviation and development work to improve the level of the education and culture of the staffs, and organized trainings for more than 10,000 person-times in 2009.

　　【Environmental protection and construction】 The poor farms continuously increased efforts on environmental protection and construction to orderly promote returning farmland to forests, returning pastoral areas to grassland, “three north” shelter forest system building and the natural forest protection project. It has now forest resources of ​​861,733 hectares and the forest coverage rate reaches 4.1%.

　　【Social poverty alleviation】 Progress has been made in the institutional building for pairing-off poverty alleviation between the poor farms and the corps’ organs, institutions, units, enterprises, colleges and research institutes. Through experience-sharing, they further clarified the directions and tasks and enhanced the sense of responsibility for doing a good job in poverty alleviation. Some departments and units’ major leaders personally took charge of the anti-poverty work and took it as a long-term political task to implement the poverty reduction responsibility and built a long-term effective mechanism. They adopted flexible models for pairing-off poverty alleviations, and not only allocated projects and funds, but also carried out poverty reduction by science and technology, poverty reduction in selected spots and poverty alleviation by donations, etc.

　　【Anti-poverty fund project inspection】 According to the requirements of checking unhealthy tendencies and malpractices put forward by the corps in 2009, it mainly carried out inspections on the launching, implementation, examination and acceptance, operation and maintenance of the anti-poverty fund projects. According to the inspection results, there were no phenomena of misuse, misappropriation, interception or extracting anti-poverty funds on the poor farms. Individual projects that were not completed and accepted on schedule or had no complete project materials were required to make rectification within a limited period of time. The inspections have improved the level of poverty reduction projects and the management of anti-poverty funds.