Fang Ruibiao, a delegate to the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, has received much acclamation for his work in helping a village in Shanxi province eliminate poverty within a year. [Photo/Xinhua]

Fang Ruibiao, a delegate to the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, has received a lot of acclamation for his hard work in successfully helping a poor village named Loufangping, administered by Lyuliang city in Shanxi province, eliminate poverty within a year.

In August, 2015, Fang worked as an editor at the China Association for Science and Technology, and was sent to Loufangping village as secretary of the local Party branch.

The village has an altitude of between 1,800 and 2,230 meters, and is accessible by only one road. When Fang arrived, there were 473 villagers in 132 households, 32 of them poverty-stricken.

"There were some 100 impoverished people, most of them left-behind elderly," said Fang Ruibiao.

Fang decided to help local people to increase their income through planting potatoes since few other crops are able to grow at such high altitude and low temperature.

Fang used a fund of roughly 900,000 yuan ($135,954) offered by the China Association for Science and Technology to build a plantation base of potatoes in the area. All the impoverished households in the village joined the program which covered 600 mu (40 hectares).

Fang also built 28 warehouses to store potatoes in order to increase their price through out-of-season sales. Able to hold 2,000 tons of potatoes, the warehouses doubled the yearly income of the village.

Fang also strived to make the internet available in the village and finally succeeded with the support of the Shanxi Association for Science and Technology and the Shanxi branch of the China Mobile Communications Corporation in 2016. Since then, local people in Loufangping village have been able to access the internet for free.