Vision shows village way out of poverty

According to Wang Zhiqun, head of Hunan poverty relief office, they have built seven leading agricultural industries in impoverished areas and founded over 17,000 industrial poverty relief cooperatives which helped 3.56 million registered impoverished people to overcome poverty through characteristic industries.

"We have explored a series of reproducible and propagable 'Hunan experience' items during the poverty alleviation such as microcredit loans. Villages including Shibadong, Changputang and Shazhou have become the national model in targeted poverty alleviation," Wang says.

According to Wang, red tourism has played an important role in targeted poverty alleviation in Hunan.

Wang says in November 2020, the Hunan local government collaborated with Jiangxi authorities to host a national red tourism expo in Changsha to promote the red tourism development in both provinces.

"We have updated our red tourism products to help with targeted poverty alleviation," Wang says, adding that they have also perfected the road network for multiple red tourism routes.

In 2021, the red tourism special railway line from Shaoshan, the birthplace of Mao Zedong, to Jinggangshan in Jiangxi will go into operation.

"We also focus on developing the related industries around red tourism to help with targeted poverty alleviation. For example, in Shaoshan, a large group of rural tourism projects have been seamlessly connected to the red tourism industry, which has become a new engine for driving local economic development," Wang says.

"Shibadong village's red tourism development measures have shown remarkable achievement in accelerating poverty relief, which has a positive impact in the province and even in the whole country."

Contact the writers at liyingxue@chinadaily.com.cn