Shibadong, a village of the Miao ethnic group and cradle of China's targeted poverty alleviation initiative, has successfully shaken off poverty and developed into a prosperous place with a bright future over the past decade.
Statistics show that the per capita disposable income of local residents grew from 1,668 yuan ($232) in 2013 to 18,369 yuan ($2,558.8) in 2020 and that the local collective economy surged from nearly zero to over two million yuan ($278,600) during the same period.
Extend targeted assistance to impoverished families
Shi Linjiao, who was born in 1996, dreamed of studying at a conservatory of music during childhood.
Her father died of disease and the family plunged into economic crisis at a critical moment when she was preparing for the national college entrance exam, or gaokao, in 2015.
Village officials and a county-level poverty alleviation team quickly visited Shi's family when they learned about their misfortune. With their support, her family was able to access favorable policies and allowances.
Later, Shi was admitted to the Zhejiang Conservatory of Music and smoothly completed her undergraduate studies with national student loans.
Shi chose to return to Huayuan and help local people sell their agricultural products through livestreaming after she worked in cities for several years.
Shibadong has taken comprehensive measures to better regulate the appraisal and verification of candidates for poverty-stricken families in their application for favorable national policies.
So far, the village has identified 136 households with 542 people as being impoverished.
Foster targeted industries for Shibadong
During an inspection tour, the county-level poverty alleviation team found that there were kiwi fruit growing on the mountains of Shibadong. Therefore, they led a group of villagers to hold exchange activities in Pujiang in Southwest China's Sichuan Province for the commercial planting of kiwi fruit.
Later, the poverty alleviation team got contact with a home-grown fruit processing factory to facilitate the planting of high-quality varieties of kiwi fruit and invited local people to become stakeholders with national financial support in the business venture.
In 2014, the Party committee and government of Huayuan allocated a slice of land in an agricultural industrial park to support the planting of kiwi fruit in the form of land transfer.
The planting of kiwi fruit by Shibadong people has also received technical and financial support from Wuhan Botanical Garden in the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the branch of the People's Bank of China in Xiangxi Tujia and Miao Autonomous Prefecture.
Right now, the village has developed with a cluster of industries like a spring water plant, tourism enterprises, catering and homestay businesses, and meat processing, established all-round sales channels, and nurtured a public brand in the name of Shibadong.