Tang Chao | the inspiration of the butterfly change of "China's first village for poverty alleviation"

In 2020, all 832 poverty-stricken counties in China will be crowned! Decisive victory was won in the decisive battle against poverty. Interpreting the Chinese miracle of poverty alleviation and development, Chixi Village, the story of poverty alleviation and prosperity in this small village known as "China's first village for poverty alleviation" is a typical sample. On June 24, 1984, the People's Daily published a letter from a reader on the front page, "Poor Mountain Villages Hope to Implement Special Policies to Cure Poverty and Get Rich", telling the story of Chixi Village in Ningde District, Fujian Province, and distributing a commentator's article "Caring for Poor Areas", which aroused concern all over the country. In September of that year, the CPC Central Committee and the State Council issued the Notice on Helping Poor Areas Change Their Appearance as Soon as Possible, kicking off the prelude to the work of poverty alleviation and development in the new period. The obscure Chixi Village is also known as "China's First Poverty Alleviation Village". On February 19, 2016, when General Secretary Xi Jinping video-linked the villagers of Chixi Village, he was overjoyed and said with great affection: "I said in Ningde, dripping water through stones, long work, weak birds fly first, you have done it." Your practice also confirms our current policy, that is, poverty alleviation work should be tailored to local conditions and precise efforts. The success of "China's First Village for Poverty Alleviation" has witnessed the spirit of struggle of the party organization of Chixi Village in uniting and leading the Hanshe masses to "struggle hard, work tenaciously, drip through stones, and work for a long time", and witnessed the experience of the Communist Party of China to take the people as the center and lead the people of the whole country to build a well-off society in an all-round way.

Party building leads, common prosperity, and adheres to the dialectical unity of the party's leadership and the people's main body. Adhering to the party's leadership is the fundamental guarantee for victory in poverty alleviation, and grass-roots party organizations are the fighting fortress for implementing the party's deployment of poverty alleviation and development work. In 2004, when Fujian Province carried out the work of "promoting the whole village" poverty alleviation and development in key villages in the form of "cadres stationed in villages", Chixi Village effectively activated the construction of grass-roots organizations through the "first secretary stationed in the village" and ensured that the party's correct principles and policies were implemented. In recent years, Chixi Village has trained more than 20 party members to become rich, and has supported and driven 14 poor households with disabilities and 70 shes to embark on the road to poverty alleviation. In 2015, General Secretary Xi Jinping gave instructions in the State Nationalities Commission's "Bulletin on Ethnic Work" entitled "China's First Village for Poverty Alleviation and Development" and the people of all ethnic groups in Chixi She's Village, Ningde City, Fujian Province, have fully entered a well-off life" - "To achieve a well-off life in an all-round way, no ethnic minority can be left behind." In recent years, Chixi Village has raised more than 2 million yuan to improve the conditions for running primary schools in the village, and has established a culinary association, a young farmer entrepreneurship and employment guidance center, an agricultural technical service team, a peasant cultural school, a vocational secondary school Chixi branch, etc., to develop e-commerce, guide villagers to enhance their ability to get rich, and stimulate the internal motivation for poverty alleviation. Poverty alleviation embodies the fundamental value pursuit and ideal of struggle of socialism, and embodies the CPC's adherence to the people's dominant position, the mass line, and the viewpoint of the masses.

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The weak bird flies first, and the poor get rich before they get rich, and they adhere to the dialectical unity of contradictions and the struggle. Everything has a dialectical development process. All contradictory things are interconnected, not only co-existing in a unity under certain conditions, but also transforming into each other under certain conditions. In 1988, Xi Jinping, then secretary of the Ningde Prefectural Party Committee, said that weak birds can fly first, and poor people may get rich first. Without historical baggage and red tape, poor areas can more emancipate their minds and go into battle lightly. Chixi Village, a typical poor village of "old, young, border and poor" in eastern Fujian, later took advantage of its location in the southwest foothills of Taimu Mountain to introduce tourism development enterprises and integrate into the "Tourism Economic Circle around Taimu Mountain", driving more than 200 households in Chixi Village to participate in tourism operations. In 2019, a total of 270,000 tourists were received, and the revenue of tourism-related industries reached 21.6 million yuan. Chixi Village is also the epitome of Ningde, with the landing of large projects such as Ningde Times New Energy, SAIC Ningde Base, Qingtuo Group, Ningde, which used to be known as the "golden fault zone" along the southeast coast of China, ushered in a period of economic development and became a sample of poverty alleviation. From "China's first village for poverty alleviation" to building a "model village" for rural revitalization with fujian characteristics, we should think of danger in times of peace and never stagnate. Adapt measures to local conditions, exert precise force, and adhere to the dialectical unity of the universality and particularity of contradictions. General Secretary Xi Jinping once pointed out, "Based on local resources, it is necessary to base ourselves on local resources, and we should live in agriculture, forestry, animal husbandry, business, and tourism, and achieve local poverty alleviation by supporting the development of characteristic industries." "To find an effective way to accurately get rid of poverty, we must first find out the "family background", find out the reasons, start from objective reality, and do what we are good at. Chixi Mountains and Rivers are beautiful, the humanities are impressive, the tourism resources are rich, and there are rich hydraulic resources, Chixi Village uses the advantages of resources to develop tourism service industries, rare seedlings, famous fruits and vegetables, freshwater aquaculture and other characteristic industries, and has found a way to get rich. Chixi village cultivated land area is small, climate, mountain and soil conditions are suitable for growing white tea, in recent years to further increase the development of the white tea industry, only the project of growing white tea has driven the villagers to increase their annual per capita income to 7,000 yuan. Chixi Village has established a "1 + N" industrial model, led by tourism, vigorously excavating cultural resources such as poverty alleviation, She, and Red, exploring multi-channel and diversified new paths for poverty alleviation, relying on the provincial Minzong Department to help the whole village promote poverty alleviation and development for three years, and being listed as a pilot village for the protection and development of ethnic minority villages in the country, implementing construction projects such as village façade transformation, She's custom shopping street, Shexiang shanshui wooden house maintenance, flood control embankment and landscape belt along the creek, and creating a village with the characteristics of the She ethnic group in eastern Fujian. Combined with the pilot experiment of the national comprehensive rural reform, the pilot test area centered on Chixi radiates the surrounding 8 administrative villages to create a rural tourism pattern of "Great Chixi". In this way, "real poverty alleviation, real poverty alleviation, and real poverty alleviation" will make the results of poverty alleviation stand the test of history. Dripping water through stones, long-term achievements, adhere to the dialectical unity of quantitative change and qualitative change. Poverty alleviation is a protracted battle and a project that generations have continued to work on. General Secretary Xi Jinping once pointed out in Ningde that party members and cadres should carry forward the spirit of "dripping water through stones", "pursue little by little enterprising, and dare to become the foreshadowing of overall success". In 1994, 88 people from 22 households in Xiashanxi implemented the first batch of "benefit projects" in the province to relocate the whole village, and more than 280 villagers in the surrounding 12 natural villages relocated to the central village. In the work of poverty alleviation, we must not be impatient and aggressive, we must advance the work steadily and steadily, we must overcome delay and inefficiency, we must have the spirit of "dripping water through stones and making achievements for a long time", and we need to grasp the rhythm from quantitative change to qualitative change. General Secretary Xi Jinping stressed that poverty alleviation is not the end, but the starting point of a new life and a new struggle. At present, although the absolute poverty in our country has "bottomed out", it does not mean that this work is completely over. In view of the changes in the main contradictions, it is necessary to clarify the work ideas, promote the smooth transformation of the poverty reduction strategy and the work system, and comprehensively integrate it into the rural revitalization strategy.

Author:Tang Chao (Fudan University)

Editor: Yu Ying