President's visit set course for country's poverty fight

30 years ago, Fujian township lacked paved roads, electricity, tap water

For decades, the mountainous township of Xiadang in Fujian province offered few opportunities for Wang Guangchao to make a decent living.

Tea plantations dotting the subtropical highlands provided the main source of income, but transporting farm produce along a rugged trail to the outside world posed a daunting challenge because of poor infrastructure.

For those living in the hillside villages in Shouning county, where Xiadang is located, it was hard to make ends meet.

Wang recalled the painstaking efforts involved in shouldering loads of tea leaves to sell, which meant visiting three different markets, only to find that prices often dropped without warning.

The villagers' dilemma was even more apparent when it came to raising pigs. Taking the larger animals for sale was virtually impossible, and every household tried to raise smaller ones.

"Life without roads was unforgiving. It was like being a frog at the bottom of a well, or a bird in a cage," Wang said.

In those days, Xiadang, nicknamed "the Siberia of Shouning", was the only township in Fujian that had no paved roads, tap water, electricity or office buildings.

But on July 19, 1989, President Xi Jinping, who was secretary of the Communist Party of China Ningde prefectural committee at the time, made his first trip to Xiadang. It took Xi, who is now general secretary of the CPC Central Committee, a three-hour journey by car and a two-hour walk in scorching summer heat along twisting mountain trails to reach the township.

During a meeting that day, Xi proposed prioritizing the building of a sealed road, a hydropower station and office building for the county government, despite the prefecture's tight budget.

The decision marked the start of a poverty reduction campaign spanning more than 30 years, during which the township's per capita income rose from less than 200 yuan in 1988 to over 13,000 yuan ($1,834 at today's rates) last year.

Xi made another two trips to the township, later that year and in 1996, when he was the deputy Party chief of the province.