County in Jiangxi turns idle rural assets into profitable pastures

Rao Yuxiao never expected that returning to the countryside would increase his income several fold.

In 2012, after graduating from college, Rao left Huichang county in Jiangxi province and moved to Fujian province. He quickly found a job as a planner for an advertising company in Xiamen.

"I worked from nine to six every workday. At that time, the term '996' (9 am to 9 pm, six days a week) didn't exist yet, but the work pressure was still significant," said the 34-year-old.

The turning point came in 2015. That year, Rao married and returned to his hometown of Huichang "for a stable and cozy life".

By then, rural areas had started providing subsidies for young people returning to their hometowns to farm.

Nowadays, there are more diverse policies supporting young people who are returning to the countryside, he said. For example, the county strongly supports large-scale farming, and provides agricultural technology guidance and end-to-end agrarian services, including drone spraying and harvesting, all of which can be done on a single mobile platform.

Previously, Rao made around 150,000 yuan ($21,100) a year working in Fujian. "Now, I can earn hundreds of thousands more. This is beyond what I had imagined," he said.

The policies are part of the rural reform initiatives implemented in Huichang in 2022, a year after nearly 100 million rural poor in China had been lifted out of abject poverty.

At the end of February 2021, President Xi Jinping announced China had secured a "complete victory" in its fight against poverty. All 832 counties designated by the government as poverty-stricken in 2013 have shaken off their poverty labels. China has achieved the poverty reduction goals of the United Nations' 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development 10 years ahead of schedule.

Many of China's rural areas have also become models for poverty alleviation in developing countries, but success also brings greater responsibilities.

As a result, the focus of China's rural work has shifted to comprehensively promoting rural vitalization.

In 2021, at the Central Rural Work Conference, Xi emphasized that after achieving victory in poverty alleviation, the focus should shift to comprehensively advancing rural vitalization, marking a historic shift in the focus of rural development. Importantly, it is crucial to maintain the achievements of poverty alleviation and effectively connect them with rural vitalization to ensure continued prosperity in rural areas, he added.