"I earned 1,500 yuan (US$180) in the past growing 30
mu (5
acres) of red-skin wheat, but now I make over 6,000 yuan (US$720)
on just 1
mu (0.17 acres) of green-house vegetables," said
Ma Ying from Shangdu County, Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region. She
is one of 400,000 people who have lifted themselves out of poverty
by resettling in places with better living conditions.
Since 2001, the State Development Planning Commission (SDPC) has
allocated 1.9 billion yuan (US$230 million), plus the 850 million
yuan (US$103 million) raised by local governments, to migrate
418,000 people out of poverty. Most of them have solved the
problems of food and clothing, and some have even managed to get
rich, according to Guo Peizhang, director general of the regional
department of SDPC. This kind of migration strategy will play an
increasingly important role in alleviating poverty in the
future.
Migration will help those living in areas with frequent national
disasters and adverse conditions shake off the plight of poverty.
Inner Mongolia and Ningxia autonomous regions and Guizhou and
Yunnan provinces were used to pilot the project. With preferential
policies and supplementary capital from the state, many people have
moved to areas with better production and living conditions and
engaged themselves in more highly efficient agriculture and other
high-income industries. Each person can claim 3,500-5,000 yuan
(US$420-600) from the government, to assist in resettlement and the
construction of necessary educational and cultural facilities. The
funds needed for production will be raised by local governments,
the villagers themselves and other poverty alleviation
channels.
Of
the four pilot autonomous regions and provinces, Inner Mongolia and
Ningxia have developed ways of "expanding towns by migration" and
"establishing new migrant villages." The former refers to setting
up leading industries such as vegetable planting and agricultural
and herd product processing, thereby extending the channels open to
migrant populations to get rich. The latter refers to the process
of moving the poor to places with better farmland and water
conservation conditions, thus building relatively large
administrative villages. At the same time, Yunnan and Guizhou
provinces resettled their migrants in both "centralized" and
"decentralized" ways. "Centralized" means developing new farmland
with improved irrigation facilities for the poor, while
"decentralized" means contracting existing farmland within villages
to offer better living conditions to migrants.
(China.org.cn by Li Jinhui, November 28, 2002)