The issues that made our year

Poverty eradication on track

In recent years, I have traveled to some of the poorest areas in China's western regions in the hope of bringing back stories that will tell our readership about the nation's work to eradicate absolute poverty.

I spoke with herders on the outskirts of Lhasa, capital of the Tibet autonomous region, who had recently shaken off poverty through relocation programs that moved them closer to schools, hospitals, factories and government-funded training centers.

Many had spent their lives herding yaks and sheep among the snowcapped mountains, and had never attended school. Some younger herders said they felt stuck because of a lack of skills and capital to start a new life elsewhere.

I've talked to apple farmers in Jingning county, Gansu province, where the sunlight and temperatures make a perfect production base for the fruit, but the farmers seldom collected the financial benefits they deserved.

The orchards mostly sit on hilltops where temperatures vary vastly by day and night. That helps sugar to build up in the apples, but creates irrigation problems. For generations, the harvests were completely at the mercy of the weather.

Rain during the harvest season could ruin a year's hard work, as it would make the path leading to the orchard impassable for trucks for a long time, raising transportation costs and keeping farmers from the best sales season.

That changed after a State-owned company built roads and bridges, and fostered other industries in the village via a "paired assistance" program.

I've also spoken with workers in Kashgar, Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region, where factories were built to help farmers work labor-intensive jobs on their doorsteps, and herders in Menyuan county, Qinghai province, who lease their grassland to companies, which in turn employ them to conserve the environment and boost incomes.

Each family that is yet to escape poverty has a poster on their wall, detailing each adult's work status and children's schooling.

It is part of a profiling system known as Jiandang Lika, which requires local officials to register poor people one by one and specify the cause of their poverty to help formulate appropriate action.