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Combo photo taken on Dec 21, 2019 by Yang Wenbin shows the new residential buildings at a relocation area (up) and photo taken on Dec 2, 2019 by Wu Dejun shows the former houses of relocated people (down) in Congjiang County, Southwest China's Guizhou province. [Photo/Xinhua] |
Guizhou province had relocated 1.88 million people by November as part of a poverty relief project set up for the 13th Five-Year Plan (2016-20), the provincial government said on Monday.
About 82 percent of those relocated were poverty-stricken, officials said.
Xu Min, deputy head of Guizhou's ecological migration office, said the Guizhou relocation has been an unprecedented task and the largest relocation in China.
With great effort, the task was completed, and the creation of infrastructure to support the new residents, as well as providing a good welfare system, is ongoing.
The Chinese government pledged in 2014 to enact more supportive policies to lift the country's poorest 70 million people above the poverty line by the end of 2020.
Relocating people who live in virtually uninhabitable places, such as deep in the mountains and deserts, is one of the methods to help people break the cycle of poverty.
The residents of Ameiqituo, a small town in the province, were moved from the village of Sanbaoxiang two years ago. Up to 59 percent of Sanbaoxiang's population of 5,850, from 1,274 families, were extremely poor in 2014.
Wen Anmei, a villager and dancer in Sanbaoxiang, said her family now has a much better life.
"There is convenient transportation in Ameiqituo. Hospitals and schools are all near home," she said. "I got a job in a tourist company in town with a monthly salary of 3,800 yuan ($542), which would have been hard to imagine in the past.
"Even my mom and dad both got their jobs thanks to the local government."
She said her mom became a cleaner with a salary of 1,800 yuan a month and her dad is a forest ranger with monthly income of 800 yuan.
The local government has been making efforts to help all the immigrants find jobs. In the past two years, the authority has been developing farming, chicken breeding and herbal cultivation to employ all the impoverished from the village.
The government has introduced eight companies into Ameiqituo. The companies started skill training for local people and organized recruitment locally, providing choices for the residents.
The tourism industry was also cultivated with the help of the government.
In the past four years, 10,090 villages were relocated, according to the provincial government, and that is just the first step.
Xu, the deputy head, said 2.5 billion yuan was invested in restoring and building new kindergartens and primary and middle schools, as well as setting up healthcare centers and residential care center for the aged.
"This huge project will change the entire lives of people who have spent their years in remote villages. The fate of their offspring was also changed," Xu said.
Up to 95.2 percent of the migrants were relocated to cities and towns, which has raised the urbanization rate of Guizhou by 5 percentage points. That population will create consumption demand in cities and towns, which will boost the local economy.
At the same time, the areas where they used to live will be reforested, which is beneficial for the natural environment, she said.
