All Tibetan areas in Sichuan have been lifted out of poverty! How did the local government do it?

On February 18, the Sichuan Provincial Government issued a notice approving 16 Tibetan counties, including Heishui County, Rongtang County, Aba County of Aba Tibetan and Qiang Autonomous Prefecture, Yajiang County, Luhuo County, and Seda County of Ganzi Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, to be removed from the list of poverty-stricken counties. Together with the 16 Tibetan counties that have already exited the poverty list, Sichuan’s Tibetan areas have now achieved poverty alleviation across the board. So how did the local government do it?

In recent years, Sichuan has strengthened policy support and industrial support, issued opinions on strengthening work in Tibetan areas in all aspects, and concentrated superior forces to conquer the poverty bastions in Tibetan areas. In 2013, we focused on implementing the “Six People’s Livelihood Projects”, with funding projects precisely focused on impoverished counties in Tibetan areas, and priority support given to industry policies such as education, health, transportation, and water conservancy. In 2017, four supporting opinions were formulated to strengthen poverty alleviation assistance, accelerate the construction of enclave parks, and implement talent revitalization projects to further increase assistance to deeply impoverished areas. The province has invested a total of 10.76 billion yuan in special financial poverty alleviation funds and coordinated and integrated 28.694 billion yuan of agricultural-related financial funds to be used for poverty alleviation in Tibetan areas. At the same time, Sichuan Province attaches great importance to the people's livelihood in Tibetan areas, strictly implements the "control dropouts and ensure schooling" responsibility system, and innovatively establishes five systems, including regular comparison of household registration and school registration systems, centralized school custody of compulsory education students' ID cards, and academic compensation for over-age students. All children and young people of school age from poor families receive compulsory education; it continues to promote 15 years of free education in ethnic minority areas and "9+3" free vocational education in Tibetan areas, and promotes the expansion and improvement of free education. Accelerate the standardization of medical and health institutions, and ensure that all township health centers and village clinics in poor counties meet the standards; the personal contributions of poor people for participating in the basic medical insurance for urban and rural residents will be fully paid by the fiscal department, and the proportion of self-paid medical expenses for poor households within the county will be controlled within 5%.

Sichuan has made efforts both internally and externally, and has also gathered aid to Tibet from various parties to form a powerful synergy to overcome difficulties. Deepen the poverty alleviation cooperation between the eastern and western regions and deepen targeted poverty alleviation, connect the poverty alleviation cooperation among 34 counties in eight cities in Guangdong and Zhejiang provinces, and provide counterpart support to 32 poor counties in Tibetan areas. We actively connected with the five central units designated for targeted poverty alleviation in the Tibetan areas of Sichuan, and helped the nine counties in the Tibetan areas to broaden their work ideas and innovate poverty alleviation methods. We will continue to do a good job in designated poverty alleviation work in poor counties in Tibetan areas within the province, and ensure that each poor county has 1-3 provincial departments (units), 1-3 colleges and universities, at least 1 medical institution, and 1-3 state-owned enterprises and financial institutions for targeted poverty alleviation. Deepen the paired assistance within the province, and implement the paired assistance by the more developed 6 cities and 23 counties in the province to the 32 poor counties in the Tibetan area. The assisted counties will allocate paired assistance funds at the rate of 0.3% to 0.5% of the general public budget fiscal revenue each year.

It is reported that Sichuan Province will improve the monitoring and dynamic assistance mechanism to prevent people from falling back into poverty, and increase support for employment to consolidate the results of poverty alleviation.