Minning town, a model for poverty-alleviation work

In May 1996, under the strategic guidance of the CPC Central Committee, Fujian and Ningxia established a poverty-alleviation cooperation and counterpart support relationship.

President Xi Jinping, then deputy secretary of the Fujian Provincial Party Committee, served as the leader of the Fujian-Ningxia poverty-alleviation leading group.

In 1997, Xi named the place "Minning Village". Then, the place began to cultivate and develop characteristic industries, build water conservancy on a large scale, sort out land, and carry out water transfer project, thus ending the history of poor people relying on natural resources.

With the support of Fujian, experts from the Fujian Agriculture and Forestry University guided and helped local people to build greenhouses and taught them related technologies, thus cultivating the first real industry in the town – the fungus industry, and embarked on a new road of relying on characteristic industries to increase peasants' income.

By 2001, the population of the village had reached 14,000, and the original administrative village was developed into five administrative villages, thus a new Muining town was established.

The place also introduced the Qinghered raspberry ecological leisure industrial park project, planting 2,700 mu of red raspberries.

As the world's largest red raspberry contiguous planting base, it provides job for more than 400 peoplewhose average annual income reaches more than 25,000 yuan.

It also helps promote the rapid development of cultural tourism.

"The biggest wish of immigrants to move out of the mountains is to improve production and living conditions and live a good life," said Wang Yongqiang, town mayor of Minning.

The town insists on planning first, focusing on strengthening infrastructure construction, making the appearance of town and villages change greatly in a short period of time.

It also takes advantage of the poverty alleviation and development policies of the Party and the government of various levels to develop social undertakings, continuously improve people's livelihood, and instill in the immigrants a growing sense of gain.

Following the successful practice of Minning town, Ningxia has gradually relocated and resettled 1.14 million poor people. The per capita income has risen by more than 2,000 yuan after they relocated.

It has fundamentally solved the problem of poor areas that are not suitable for living or development.