Nujiang Experience: A Beautiful Road to Poverty Reduction

China eliminated absolute poverty in 2020, attracting the attention of the international community, and bagging the praise and positive comments as well as curiosity and doubt. Some cannot imagine that a country with a population of 1.4 billion has been able to lift all its people out of absolute poverty, completing the poverty reduction goal of the United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development 10 years ahead of schedule.

If you go to any place in China that has successfully eliminated poverty and try to see how they did so, you will feel inspired. Nujiang Prefecture in Yunnan Province is one such example.

Nujiang was an extremely poor place, with 98 percent of its land area high mountains and wide valleys and 76 percent of its cultivated land vast slopes. The prefecture still had 164,000 people living below the poverty line in 2018, that is, 38.14 percent of its rural population. Most of them lived in the mountains or on the hillside.

Nujiang implemented two major poverty alleviation strategies based on studies. The first was to relocate entire villages not suitable for human habitation to places where there was better transport. The government funded the construction of the relocation communities with supporting healthcare and education facilities as well as workshops for local economic development. All this ensured a smooth relocation and resettlement, providing relocatees with the means to better their lives.

The second strategy was to create more jobs and improve the environment for development. With this policy, Nujiang developed characteristic industries such as tourism and culture, spices, valley agriculture and biomedicine.

By December 2020, the prefecture had eradicated absolute poverty with those previously living under the poverty line freed from worries about food and clothing and guaranteed access to compulsory education, basic medical services and safe housing. Such an extremely poor place’s emergence from poverty is a modern miracle, created under the leadership of the Communist Party of China (CPC). During the fight against poverty in Nujiang, CPC members took on a special role, providing guidance and encouraging the locals to be enterprising.

China has created an approach to poverty alleviation with Chinese characteristics. This may serve as a reference for other developing countries.