FROM POVERTY TO PROSPERITY
About 70 km away from Shenjiahe, the Xinzhuang Village has developed sports as a festival activity. The village will hold a basketball invitational tournament during the week-long Spring Festival holiday. A total of 15 teams from surrounding villages will be invited to participate in the matches.
The village is located in Xihaigu, one of China's poorest areas, which is considered a "hard bone" in realizing the country's goal of eliminating absolute poverty and completing the building of "xiaokang," or a moderately prosperous society in all respects in 2020.
With about one third of the village's 2,400 permanent residents impoverished before 2018, the village's poverty rate dropped to 0.44 percent by the end of 2019 with the development of animal husbandry industry in a poverty-relief program.
Yuan Zhihai, 55, said he had taken part in the village's Spring Festival tournament for three years.
Yuan's family got rid of absolute poverty in 2018 by raising cattle with loans. He sold three cattle earlier this month, earning 46,000 yuan (6,647 U.S. dollars). He plans to increase his cattle stock this year.
With the money, Yuan is in good spirits as he prepares festival delicacies and gets ready for the sports competition.
According to Xian Hui, chairwoman of the Ningxia autonomous regional government, the region made key progress in poverty reduction last year, lifting 103,000 people out of poverty. In 2020, the region's remaining 18,800 people will shake off poverty.
The region will put in place long-term mechanisms to prevent people from returning to poverty and will not leave any family or any person behind on the path to "xiaokang," she said.
In the Year of Rat, China is determined to secure a victory in the battle against poverty.
The number of impoverished people dropped from 770 million in 1978 to 16.6 million in 2018, with the poverty rate dropping from 97.5 percent to 1.7 percent. From 2013 to 2018, China lifted 12 million people out of poverty annually through intensive efforts. China is the first developing country to realize the UN Millennium Development Goal for poverty reduction.
In realizing the "xiaokang" dream, the government is implementing an innovation-driven development strategy.
Zhao Yan, chair of Bloomage Biotechnology, a Chinese pharmaceutical company, said with the growing consumption power of Chinese citizens, enterprises face both opportunities and challenges in advancing technological innovation to drive growth.
The company, based in eastern China's Shandong Province, stepped into the spotlight after it teamed up with the Palace Museum in the Forbidden City in Beijing to present a series of lipsticks. The cosmetics products with creative cultural elements are appealing to young people, bringing in 40 million yuan in revenue in the first half of 2019.
"In the new year, we plan to focus our innovation on developing functional food with hyaluronic acid and other bioactive substances," Zhao said.
