Qingdao-Guizhou Pairing-off Poverty Alleviation

　　【Overview】 In 2009, Qingdao was twinned with Anshun City and Tongren of Guizhou Province, Shigatse City of Tibet, the location of Three Gorges Dam – Yiling District, Yichang City of Hubei Province and Cao County of Heze city, Shandong Province in the East-West pairing-off poverty alleviation. In 2009, the city’s financial departments at all levels allocated annual relief funds of 100 million Yuan. Counterpart support for Guizhou Province is one of the important tasks of Qingdao City and the city party committee and government attached great importance to it. In 2009, Qingdao City government donated funds and materials valued 16.40 million Yuan for Anshun City and Tongren of Guizhou Province and all walks of society donated materials valued 12 million Yuan. It implemented a total of 152 production and living facility and social welfare projects to directly benefit more than 50,000 local poor people, including the entire village advancement projects in the “development-oriented poverty alleviation villages” and “three guarantee villages”, poverty alleviation by agricultural industrialization – development of planting and breeding industry, village road building, human and livestock drinking water projects, irrigation projects, cadre and professional technical training, education and medical projects, etc. It also organized human resource trainings for 650 cadres and technicians and rural labor transfer trainings for more than 12000 people, and provided financial aid for more than 1000 poor students as well. Meanwhile, Qingdao City organized Qingdao Haier, Hisense, Red Star, Doublestar and other outstanding enterprises to carry out economic cooperation in Guizhou Province to promote poverty alleviation by economic development and thus promote employment and improve livelihood, and achieved significant effectiveness.

　　Over the 13 years of East-West pairing-off poverty alleviation, Qingdao has issued more than 1 billion Yuan for Anshun and Tongren of Guizhou Province, of which more than 150 million Yuan was financial fund and 45 million Yuan was material donation, and a total of more than 800 economic cooperation and poverty alleviation and development projects have been constructed.

　　【Construction of “development-oriented poverty alleviation villages”】 According to the requirements of “three guarantee” for entire village advancement of LGOP, Qingdao City arranged funds to implement more than 100 “development-oriented poverty alleviation villages” in Guizhou Province to improve the basic production and living conditions of impoverished villages in 2009. In accordance with the principle of entire village advancement, it focused on the improvement of the basic production and living conditions of impoverished villages and achieving overall poverty reduction through the development of production and increase of income. First, it implemented village-level grassroots construction and set up village-level party branch and committee office. Secondly, it constructed information dissemination projects and set up satellite TV program receiving and transition facilities. Thirdly, it implemented education construction projects, set up Hope Primary Schools in big villages and reading rooms and cultural activity rooms in small villages. Fourthly, it constructed health and village appearance improvement projects, set up medical rooms, built and repaired toilets and developed biogas industry. Fifthly, it implemented production project construction projects, irrigation projects and road building projects, and supported the development of breeding of pigs, cattle, sheep and fishery, fruit forest, vegetable growing, etc. Through the construction of development-oriented poverty alleviation villages, it has improved the production and living conditions of the masses, which played an important role in changing the ideas of the farmers who have been living in the mountain areas for generations, helping them adapting to the market change, enhancing their confidence in combating poverty and helping them move towards modern civilization.

　　【Adjustment of agricultural structure】In 2009, Qingdao allocated funds for the adjustment of agricultural structure in Anshun and Tongren. It implemented grass-planting and animal husbandry projects of 15,000 mu, Rhin goose breeding projects, cold-water fish breeding projects and ten thousand-mu Chinese medicinal herb base projects, etc, and conducted livestock improvement and new varieties of cash crop planting promotion as well.

　　【Poverty alleviation by training】 Taking personnel training as an important part of counterpart support work, Qingdao City held featured industry training courses in the city and organized jointly with local governments the trainings for nearly 12000 labors in Guizhou. The participants mastered professional skills for poverty alleviation and development and many trainees have become the leaders for becoming rich. Meanwhile, it raised funds to newly build and rebuild schools in Anshun and Tongren, purchase teaching equipment and subsidize more than 1,000 children to complete primary school education.

　　【Social poverty alleviation】All walks of society in Qingdao are organized to participate in the pairing-off poverty alleviation, forming a good atmosphere for social poverty reduction. 12 districts of Qingdao are twinned with 12 poverty-stricken counties in Anshun and Tongren. Various departments directly under the city government actively participated in the counterpart support and have successively carried out “cultural poverty reduction”, “poverty alleviation by science and technology”, “poverty alleviation by education” and “poverty alleviation by health industry”, donated clothes and beddings and carried out many other activities to express their love for the people of the recipient regions.

　　【Poverty alleviation by enterprises】 In the pairing-off poverty alleviation with Guizhou, adhering to the principle of “East-west linkage, complementary advantages, mutual benefits and common development”, Qingdao City implemented the strategy of driving by resource utilization and famous brand enterprises to guide outstanding enterprises of Qingdao City to carry out economic cooperation in Guizhou. Haier, Hisense and Red Star successively went to conduct economic cooperation in Guizhou.

1. Make use of resources to achieve mutual benefits and win-win situation. Red Star Group carried out economic cooperation in Anshun City, Tongren, Zunyi City and Qiannan Prefecture. It mainly used local resources for exploration of barium salt and manganese salt, chemical product manufacturing, and the development of coal chemical, tourism and fishery industry. In 2009, the total assets of Red Star in Guizhou reached 1.341 billion Yuan, Red Star passed ISO14001 certification and was titled as “Environmental Friendly Enterprise of Guizhou Province”. The enterprises of Red Star in Zhening County of Anshun City mainly manufacture barium carbonate and infusible sulphur, etc. Red Star also invested in the construction of Baimahu Forest Park to develop biological tourism. Dalong Manganese Company in Tongren is mainly engaged in the exploration of manganese ore and the production of electrolytic manganese dioxide and is one of the Red Star enterprises with the best benefits. Fanjingshan Cold-water Fishery Company, with ocean aquatic product research in Qingdao as technical support, is successful in breeding various kinds of imported sturgeons and salmons, which filled the local gap of cold-water fish breeding and developed domestic and foreign market. While contributing to local economic development, it has also achieved leapfrog development. It paid taxes of 580 million Yuan in Guizhou Province, directly created more than 3400 jobs and helped nearly 10,000 people find jobs. It is praised by Premier Wen Jiabao as “A Model of East-West Cooperation”.

2. The development of competitive industries promotes poverty alleviation and development. Haier Group restructured Fenghua Refrigerator Factory of China Metallurgical Group Corporation as Haier Refrigerator Production Base with an annual production capacity of 1 million refrigerators and the sales markets cover nine provinces and one city in the south of the Yangtse River Delta. Hisense Group restructured Guiyang Huari Television Factory and founded “Guiyang Hisense Electrical Co., Ltd”, and established an industrial park in Guiyang Economic and Development Zone as the holding shareholder. Guiyang Hisense Electrical Co., Ltd achieved leapfrog development and the former Huari TV Factory has grown from a small-sized business with annual output of 50,000 to a modern enterprise with annual production capacity of 1.3 million with products covering various 14″—47″common and flat TV sets. The products are sold in southwest, northwest and South China and exported to Burma and other countries and regions.

　　Qingdao organized the famous brand enterprises in the city to carry out asset reorganization and optimize resource allocation in Guizhou. As a result, many local enterprises that were nearly closed witnessed development and rapidly grew into backbone enterprises, which directly and indirectly solved the employment problem of nearly 20,000 people and significantly promoted the development of local related industries, covering more than 50 matching enterprises with an annual output of more than 1 billion Yuan. Qingdao’s outstanding enterprises have become a powerful driving force to boost local economic development and lift local people out of poverty. For example, Red Star Group acquired local bankruptcy enterprises, tapped many idle assets and provided employments for laid-off workers. The annual per capita income of its staffs reached 12,000 Yuan and the wages increase year by year. Local cadres and masses all said that “as long as one person is employed by Red Star, the whole family will shake off poverty”. Guizhou Province released that the entry of enterprises of Qingdao in Guizhou promoted local economic development and poverty alleviation and development and is a distinctive characteristic of Qingdao’s counterpart support work”.

3. Promote industrial growth by market development. Following the law of economics, Qingdao City was the first to put forward the ideology of “building factories after market development” in economic cooperation. It supported the enterprises of Guizhou to hold exhibitions and product promotion fairs in Qingdao. In 2009, more than 70 enterprises of Guizhou carried out market development activities in Qingdao, the direct sales revenue reached nearly 1 million Yuan and the order value exceeded 100 million Yuan. Some products were exported to Japan, SK, HK, etc via Qingdao Port and some enterprises signed order contracts with world-class purchasers and were widely praised by the business operators.

　　(Ma Feichi, Qingdao Domestic Economic Cooperation Office)