China Headlines: Xi's war on poverty (2)

EADING BY EXAMPLE

Xi's first-hand experience with poverty only encouraged him to eradicate it in China for good.

In Liangjiahe village where Xi worked for seven years from 1969, he was inspired by the success of Dazhai, a model village in neighboring Shanxi Province, where villagers had enough to eat through the hard work to harvest grain. Xi and fellow villagers of Liangjiahe dreamed of "having corn flour for meals" for the whole year, too.

"I just turned 20 at that time, and I was mainly thinking about ways to let everyone to harvest a little more grain and have a little pocket money," Xi said.

Xi led the villagers in digging wells, building terraces and sediment storage dams, and setting up the province's first methane-generating pit.

He also invited the village's three blacksmiths, who had been working elsewhere, to come back to set up an iron cooperative.

"Forging the iron could generate some income. Only by making some money could we get things done."

Among some 30,000 young people sent to the Yan'an region from Beijing, Xi was the first to work as a Party branch secretary at that time. He was awarded a three-wheeled motorcycle by the Beijing municipal government.

"The motorcycle was useless in the village. It was even impossible to drive it into the village. Better to exchange it for something practical," Xi recalled.

He then went to the agricultural bureau of Yan'an and exchanged the motorcycle for a hand tractor, a flour milling machine, a grain thrower, a rice milling machine and a submersible pump, for villagers.

RURAL REFORM IN ZHENGDING

Reform took an early root in Xi's thinking about governance.

From 1982 to 1985, Xi served first as deputy secretary and then secretary of the CPC Zhengding County Committee in Hebei.

"The household contract responsibility system had not been put into place when I arrived," Xi said.

At the core of China's last round of rural reform, the household responsibility system meant farmers could be allocated land by contract and were entitled to any surpluses to the market or retain them for their own use.

In 1983, the secretary of Lishuangdian Commune proposed to pilot the system on a piece of land in his jurisdiction.

"Both I and another deputy secretary of the county committee supported him. One year after, only his commune reaped a good harvest compared with the ordinary output elsewhere," Xi said. "Suddenly all the people in the county said this seemed to be a viable way, and the system finally got widely implemented."

"At that time, Zhengding was a pure agricultural county. I proposed to pursue diversified economic development and a 'semi-suburban' economic model since the county is close to Shijiazhuang," Xi said. "The county [government] set up an office for diversified economy, and I was concurrently the CPC County Committee's deputy secretary and the office's director."

"The five communes south to the Hutuo River had done a good job. Many people went to work in Shijiazhuang by bike in the morning," Xi said. "In the Shijiazhuang markets, the vegetables were produced in Zhengding, those who were selling brooms and simple furniture were from Zhengding, and the guardians of the boiler rooms and the gates were also from Zhengding."

FUJIAN'S SHED & SMALL BOAT RESIDENTS

When working in Fujian, Xi often visited families that had lived in thatched sheds and small wooden boats for generations, and would ponder how to lift them out of poverty.

"Most of the fishing boats were in a dreadful state, without electricity or water supplies. The boats were low, gloomy and damp. Certain fishermen who did not have a boat just made shacks, where it was hot in summer, cold in winter, and hard to shelter from wind and rain," Xi said.

After doing research, Xi submitted a report to the CPC Fujian provincial committee, proposing resettling those living in thatched sheds and small boats.

"Communist Party members must have no peace of mind, day and night, to see people living in such poor conditions," he said when presiding over a meeting in 1998 to address the problems.

Due to Xi's proposal, in a few years several million people bid farewell to an unstable life.

The CPC attached great importance to coordinated development between the advanced and underdeveloped regions of the country. Fujian, for instance, was tasked to assist the development of Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region.

Xi was in charge of the assistance as he worked as deputy secretary of the CPC Fujian provincial committee.

"We are a socialist country. Having taken the first steps to prosper, the coastal regions in the east should not leave other areas alone. We need to achieve common prosperity," Xi said.

Within the framework of counterpart assistance, wells were dug and cellars built to store water for drinking and irrigation in Ningxia.

Xi encouraged researchers in Fujian and Ningxia to develop technology to improve potato yields. Residents in Xiji County, southern Ningxia, saw their incomes increase after planting potatoes and selling them to Fujian businesses.

The Fujian government also supported Ningxia to relocate people from impoverished areas. As a pilot project, several thousand families moved from Xihaigu to a better area near the regional capital, Yinchuan.

"The measure proved effective and we created a sustainable path," Xi said. (mo