Shanxi lifts villagers out of poverty through poverty relief efforts

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Combination photo shows villagers reading amid farm fields in Jiajiazhuang Village, Fenyang, north China's Shanxi Province (top, undated file photo); and a view of a bookstore in Jiajiazhuang Village on July 16, 2020 (bottom, photo taken by Cao Yang). Jiajiazhuang villagers were once stuck in poverty because of almost all saline-alkali soil in the fields. Young people in the village has successfully improved residents' living condition by mechanizing its agriculture and promoting rural tourism. The recent poverty relief efforts by Shanxi Province include: make road networks access to rural villages, relocate rural residents to better housing, afforest barren lands with green trees, and stimulate employment by developing tourism. Without these, the province's many plateau and mountain villages would have remained impoverished due to lack of decent roads and arable lands, plus the ensuing loss of labour force and industrial diversity. By February 2020, a total of 7,993 villages in all of the 58 impoverished counties in Shanxi have shaken off poverty, with the incidence of poverty dropping to less than 0.1 percent. (Xinhua)