Making anti-poverty fight personal
Print Edition
When Huang Tianlun decided to return to his village deep in the mountains to start up a business after a decade working in a city, his father discouraged him.
But he insisted on pursuing his dream — to change the fate of his fellow poverty-stricken villagers.
He made it. Two years after he served as Party chief of Jiaoxi village in Yongshun County in central China’s Hunan Province, Huang, 38, has successfully helped villagers shake off poverty and move into new homes in a program for poverty reduction.
Huang, a native of Jiaoxi, graduated from college in 2005 and became a journalist for a commercial newspaper in Changsha, the provincial capital.
In the same year, he joined the Communist Party of China under the influence of his father, also a Party member. Becoming Party chief of a village has been his ideal since he was young. During college, Huang said he was deeply moved by a TV drama series based on a true story, featuring a doctor from the eastern coastal province of Jiangsu who went to the Pamir Plateau to help treat the sick in the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region in the 1960s.
In 2014, he quit his job at the newspaper and returned to his village, in a national nature reserve, to start his own business.
Three years later, he was elected to be a member of the Party branch of the village, and director of the villagers’ committee, because of his high education background and experience.
He was later appointed Party chief of the village, where nearly 70 percent of the village’s 655 people lived in poverty due to its harsh natural conditions and poor infrastructure.
“A poverty-stricken village needs people to come back. To eliminate poverty and vitalize the rural areas, young people are needed to do things. I wanted to take the initiative,” Huang said.
Thanks to a government-funded relocation program, the villagers moved to their new houses in a township from their reclusive village. They also tried to plant herbs to increase incomes.
Land of dreams
Last year, the per-capita net income of villagers reached 7,600 yuan (US$1,075), and the village shook off poverty overall.
Like Huang, the vast rural regions have become a land of dreams and opportunities for hundreds of thousands of young Party members to serve the people and realize their value by helping farmers shake off poverty and live a better life.
In Oqar County, Xinjiang, 28-year-old Zhou Long is devoted to poverty alleviation work.
Zhou, deputy government head of Boritokay Township and also a Party member, has been working in Xinjiang since graduating from a teachers’ college in Sichuan Province.
The township shook off poverty in 2018. “We have done a solid job in poverty alleviation in recent years,” Zhou said, adding he cares most about the families on the verge of poverty.
It is his routine to visit households, go to the fields to chat with villagers, and discuss solutions with other officials to increase the income of herders and farmers.
Last year, villagers were mobilized to plant tulips, roses, and other flowers.
“The sales of these have already been booked out, and the revenue is much higher than that of vegetables,” Zhou said.
“One of our key tasks is to strengthen the coordinated development of agriculture and husbandry.”
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