Shenzhen – Guizhou Pairing-off Poverty Alleviation

　　【Overview】Shenzhen municipal government seriously implemented the unified deployment made by the Central Committee of CPC and the State Council on the East-West pairing-off poverty alleviation, carried through the strategy of “two overall situations”, the theory of “common prosperity” and the important thinking of the" Three Represents" of the Central Committee of CPC, comprehensively implemented the scientific outlook on development and firmly established the sense of politics, overall situation, responsibility and long-term poverty reduction. Since 1996, Shenzhen has always taken counterpart support for Bijie and Qiannan Autonomous Prefecture of Guizhou Province as an important political task, conducted multi-channel, multi-level aid activities in various forms in education, health care, science and technology, labor cooperation, economic and trade exchanges, training of cadres, social donations and business cooperation, integrated various anti-poverty funds to address the livelihood problems of the poor such as living, education and health care problems, and strived to make more contributions to building a moderately prosperous and harmonious society. According to incomplete statistics, in 2011, Shenzhen donated 46.91 million Yuan of anti-poverty funds to Bijie and Qiannan of Guizhou, of which 42.81 million Yuan was aid project funds, 2.8 million Yuan was disaster relief funds and 1.3 million Yuan was for cadre trainings. It implemented 124 aid projects to directly benefit 130,000 local residents, including entire village advancement, drinking water projects for human and livestock, irrigation projects, rural roads, rural housing reconstruction, education, health care projects, etc; organized trainings for 1100 poverty relief cadres and professionals for education and health care, subsidized 11,000 needy students and organized the export of 16,000 labors.

　　【Working mechanism】Shenzhen Municipal Party Committee and Municipal Government attached great importance to counterpart support for poverty reduction in Guizhou. Main leaders personally took charge of the work and department heads were responsible for specific work. They stressed practical results and seriously implemented the plan. First, the counterpart support work was included into the important agenda of the municipal party committee and government, annual work conference on counterpart support was held to conduct special studies, develop special programs and make special deployments, and the counterpart support was included into the city and district government’s major work to receive assessment; Secondly, strengthen the organization and leadership for the counterpart support work. The city set up a leading group for counterpart support work. The Mayor and Vice Mayor respectively acted as the Head and Deputy Head. The leading group office is, as a standing body, responsible for the coordination of the city’s counterpart assistance, and various districts also set up relevant agencies to take charge of the counterpart support, forming an east-west pairing-off poverty alleviation structure featured "leadership of special principals, guidance of work plans, supervision and inspection". Thirdly, continue to conduct high-level exchange of visits. The high-level exchange of visits was not only a part of the requirements of LGOP, but also an important system of the city. Previous main leaders of Shenzhen government successively headed delegations to carry out field research in Guizhou. The high-level exchange of visits between the two regions promoted the development of pairing-off poverty alleviation. The principals of various districts of the city, Guangming New District and the party working committee of the municipal organs and the Municipal State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Bureau also carried out field research in the twinned poor counties, developed anti-poverty plans and implemented aid projects.

　　【Management system】Shenzhen always adheres to institutionalization, standardization and routinization in counterpart support work, makes strict assessment on aid projects, stresses practical results and strives to do good and practical things for the poor. First, carry out anti-poverty work relying on local party committee and government. All aid projects must be approved by county’s relevant department and reported to the county (city) and prefecture government for approval. The county (city) government is responsible for the project construction management; Secondly, do a good job of project investigation and evaluation. Organize relevant experts to carry out field research in Guizhou, apply for projects and conduct inspection on the previous year’s project construction. It also set up an aid project review team composed of relevant experts to directly participate in project survey and demonstration to strengthen social supervision and professional guidance; Thirdly, uphold the publicity system to accept supervision. In order to make the use of anti-poverty funds more transparent to the public, all aid projects must be publicly announced before implementation according to the regulations of Shenzhen City. Through announcing the annual aid projects and the allocation of funds at the government website, it consciously accepts the supervision of all circles of society and financial and audit sector; Fourthly, strengthen the sense of responsibility and implement the responsibility system. Through signing the “Liability Agreement on the Management of Counterpart Support Fund Projects”, they clarified both sides’ responsibilities and obligations and jointly performed the monitoring duties for anti-poverty funds and aid projects.

　　【Funding】According to incomplete statistics, in 2011, Shenzhen donated 46.91 million Yuan of anti-poverty funds to Bijie and Qiannan Prefecture of Guizhou Province, of which: 42.81 million Yuan was counterpart support funds, 2.8 million Yuan was disaster relief funds and 1.3 million Yuan was for training of cadres. It implemented 124 aid projects to directly benefit 130,000 local residents, including entire village advancement, drinking water projects for human and livestock, irrigation projects, rural roads, rural housing reconstruction, education, health care projects, etc.

　　【Entire village advancement】According to the general requirements of “reaching villages and households, entire village advancement” and “ensuring to directly benefit the masses” of the central government on poverty alleviation and development, in 2011, Shenzhen constructed 124 aid projects in Bijie and Qiannan Prefecture of Guizhou Province, of which 38 were aid projects (including 71 sub-projects) such as entire village advancement, drinking water project, farmland and water conservancy construction, rural road building and renovation of rural houses. 12 million Yuan was invested in Bijie to support the construction of 25 aid projects (including 53 sub-projects); 12 million Yuan was invested for the implementation of 13 aid projects (including 18 sub-projects) in Qiannan Prefecture. The construction of above projects directly benefited 60,400 people, mainly involving entire village advancement and contiguous development, and achieved significant effects.

　　【Labor service cooperation】Shenzhen – Guizhou labor service cooperation is an important part of Shenzhen’s counterpart support work. On August 18, the “2011 China (Guizhou) International Alcoholic Beverage Expo and China • Guiyang Investment and Trade Fair” was held in Guizhou. Shenzhen organized a delegation to attend the meeting and signed the framework agreement on Guizhou – Shenzhen pairing-off poverty alleviation during the “12th Five-Year Plan” period. This event was a major measure for Shenzhen to provide counterpart support for Bijie and achieve the win-win situation. The labor service cooperation between the two areas achieved significant results and more than 500,000 people from Guizhou are now working in Shenzhen.

　　【Cadre training】In 2011, in accordance with the poverty relief cadre training plan jointly developed by the State Council Leading Group Office of Poverty Alleviation and Development and Shenzhen Counterpart Support Office, on the “Human Resource Construction Base for East-West Pairing-off Cooperation in Poverty Reduction”, Shenzhen Managers Training College held training courses for 550 poverty relief and economic management cadres of Guizhou Province, organized more than 1100 experts to train cadres for Bijie and Qiannan, and the training contents included special lectures, experience of Shenzhen, cutting-edge theories, techniques and skills, field research, etc.

　　【Industrial poverty alleviation】Before 2010, Shenzhen – Guizhou pairing-off poverty relief projects were mainly infrastructure construction projects in rural areas. Since 2011, the anti-poverty projects began to gradually include industrial poverty reduction. First, special funds were arranged to develop farming projects in poor villages to increase production and income and help farmers shake off poverty. In September 2011, 2 million Yuan was allocated for the development of production in Bijie and Qiannan. Second, encourage Shenzhen’s enterprises to set up industrial zones in the twinned regions jointly with local governments. According to the guiding ideology of “industry transfer, construction of industrial zones, transfer of labors and promoting income growth”, the government actively guided various enterprises to set up raw material bases and processing bases in poor areas, and strengthen the exploration and deepen the cooperation in the field of introduction and promotion of featured industries, joint construction of industrial zones, exchange of personnel, support policies and services to achieve advantage complementation and a win-win situation. At the end of December 2011, Luohu District of Shenzhen signed with Qiannan Prefecture of Guizhou the “Framework Agreement on Cooperation in the Construction of Demonstration Bases for Poverty Alleviation and Development by Industrialization of Efficient Eco-agriculture” and determined to jointly set up the demonstration zone for industrial poverty alleviation and development in the pairing-off cooperation, aiming to help local areas develop featured agriculture and launch farm produce to the market. Now, initial results have been achieved.

　　【Development plan】The central work conference on poverty alleviation and development was convened in Beijing on November 29. General Secretary Hu Jintao stressed at the meeting that poverty alleviation and development is a long-term significant task and is a noble and great cause, the whole party and society must have a profound understanding of the importance and urgency of the work of poverty alleviation and development, enhance the consciousness and firmness for doing a good job in the field, and steadily promote the anti-poverty work with greater determination, more efforts and more effective initiatives to ensure that we’ll achieve the goal of building a moderately prosperous society by 2020. He called on the whole party and social forces to resolutely do a good job of a new round of poverty alleviation and development. In the future, we must focus on the following aspects: First, increase efforts to further expand the field of government cooperation. Continue to adhere to the system for regular high-level exchange of visits of the two regions, improve the joint meeting system for the pairing-off poverty reduction and the working mechanism for counterpart support, jointly develop the long-term planning, targets for near future and annual plan to solve the problems in the counterpart support and cooperation. Further expand areas of cooperation and enhance the self-development capacity of poor areas through industry linkage, economic and trade interaction, technology development and employment driving, aiming to achieve a win-win situation. Second, highlight key work and constantly enhance the effectiveness of the counterpart support. Further strengthen consultation and communication, integrate resources in accordance with the requirements of "resource integration for contiguous development", strive to set examples in entire county (village, town) advancement and make them play a demonstration role in the poverty reduction of contiguous poor areas, and consolidate and expand the poverty reduction results to maximize the economic and social benefits of the aid projects. Third, make innovations to the mechanisms to enhance the efficiency of relief funds. Guide the relief fund to support public welfare anti-poverty projects in poverty-stricken areas, including the renovation of dilapidated houses in rural areas, renovation of rural boarding schools, industrialization-based poverty reduction and the construction of socialist new countryside construction. Under the principle of “smooth channels, unchanged purpose, specific responsibility and merits for parties concerned”, in accordance with the requirements of “great efforts on integration of project funds, key point highlighting for project construction, clear destination of capital investment, strict management of projects and funds, significant effects”, we should promote the poverty alleviation and development in the twinned poor areas and give full play to the integrated effect and the leading, demonstration and exploratory role of relief funds. Fourth, strengthen cooperation for convergence of the industries of the two regions. Further expand the scale and scope of economic cooperation, adhere to the principle of "mutual benefit, advantage complementation, long-term cooperation and common development", actively create conditions, mobilize and guide more large and medium-sized enterprises to invest and build factories in Guizhou and participate in the economic construction of Guizhou Province through merging, buyout, joint venture business launching, share holding and renting, and shift the focus of the counterpart assistance from simple fund project support to the combination of counterpart support and industrial cooperation to achieve advantage complementation and a win-win situation. Fifth, play the role as a link to promote all-round cooperation. Strengthen labor service cooperation, carry out targeted, multi-level job skills trainings and technical trainings in various forms, and promote school-business cooperation and “order” type trainings in accordance with the principle of "government guidance and market operation" based on local labor demand. Promote media cooperation between the two and intensify the publicity of poverty reduction results and the merchant inviting work through the exchange of programs and special columns. Actively promote the cooperation in commerce, trade and tourism industry, help well-known products with local characteristics of Guizhou to enter into Shenzhen’s market through holding purchase meetings and commodities fairs and establishing direct supply bases; increase efforts on the expansion of tourism market, jointly develop boutique tourist routes, jointly organize activities of product introduction and merchant invitation. Increase efforts on exchange of sending cadres, increase sending cadres, actively establish a platform for all circles of society to get involved in the anti-poverty work of Guizhou, provide services and support, encourage the implementation of the activities of helping the poor, supporting education and volunteer services and play the role as a link.