Poverty alleviation in Baise: An example for old revolutionary base areas

“Able cadres” shoulder the burden of mass work

Pan Congcong is a post-90s graduate from Tsinghua University. In October 2015 she was transferred from the Discipline Inspection Commission in Guangxi to the post of first secretary to Fengfang Village, Lucheng Yao Ethnic Township, Tianlin County in Baise.

Soon after taking up her post, Pan Congcong found herself confronted with a challenge. The villagers earned very little from planting corn on the hillsides. With a very good local market, raising chickens offered the possibility of a much higher income. But, fearful of the risks involved, villagers were reluctant to try the business out. The Tsinghua graduate had to first teach the villagers how to calculate simple financial accounts.

“During the day, the villagers all worked in their fields,” says Pan. “We could only gather to discuss how to develop the chicken business and carry on mass work in the evening.” Meetings often lasted late into the night. When the last of the villagers had left, Pan would switch off the lights and lock the door, before returning home herself.

Her tireless efforts served to inspire the villagers. In 2016, with the support of a county policy that provides rewards for successful initiatives rather than subsidies, villagers in Fengfang Village raised more than 70,000 chickens. This has increased the income of every single impoverished household by more than 20,000 yuan (U.S. $2,924).

“Lack of training, technology and confidence is the main characteristic of impoverished households,” says Li Wenxin. “Turning sound policies into tangible businesses needs cadres responsible for poverty alleviation to 'walk the last mile'. To mobilize villagers they need to have ideas and ability, but they also need to be able to calculate accounts.”

Located in the rock desertification mountainous area of Shechang Town, Multinational Autonomous County of Longlin, Xinzhai Village suffers from a severe shortage of water and good quality soil. In October 2015 Luo Zuocheng took office as the village’s first secretary. At the sight of the bare and stony mountains, he was tempted to back out of the assignment.

Instead he buckled down to some research, and established that raising black pigs might offer a route to help the village escape from poverty. But in the village, where there was space to raise pigs there was no water, and where there was water there was no space to raise pigs. He came up with the idea of “enclave economy” — an arrangement that breaks the administrative divisions between two or more administrative units, to allow them to coordinate economic development.

Following extensive efforts, he found a piece of land 90 km from the village and built a pig farm there. He established a cooperative in which all the impoverished households in the village took a share with their poverty alleviation loans. The cooperative now has more than 300 pigs, and each impoverished household has increased its income by about 10,000 yuan (U.S. $1,462).

Luo Zuocheng speaks with great passion of his first efforts to mobilize the villagers: “Many impoverished households were trapped in passivity. Together with other village cadres I went door to door, visiting them and speaking to them again and again. At 6 o’clock in the morning, before they got up, I was already waiting outside their doors.”

Baise is a famed old revolutionary base as well as an impoverished area. “Able cadres” there are casting off their label of “academics” to become thought-leaders in poverty alleviation.