By Jin Xin

BEIJING, June 9 -- The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) and the People’s Armed Police (PAP) Force play important roles in the nation’s poverty alleviation campaign. For a long time, they have been carrying out poverty alleviation efforts in designated villages extensively, and explored several practical approaches based on local conditions, such as alleviating poverty through the development of characteristic industries, consumption, education, and medical assistance. As of the end of May 2020, all the 4,100 impoverished villages that the military was designated to help and support had been lifted out of poverty, involving 924,000 poor villagers in 293,000 low-income families.

Industrial development holds the key to poverty alleviation in the real sense.

The General Office of the Central Military Commission (CMC) helped the Fushankou Village of Laishui County, Hebei Province develop the red culture industry.

The CMC Defense Mobilization Department helped build a deep processing plant with the annual output of 200,000 tons in Dianfang Village of Hebei’s Fuping County that abounds in jujubes.

The CMC Political Work Department helped plant 10,000 mu (about1,647 acres) of crisp and red plums in Hongxin Village of Zunyi, Guizhou Province.

The CMC Equipment Development Department used the donations from officers and soldiers to build a greenhouse of edible fungus in Jingui Village of Beichuan Qiang Autonomous County, Sichuan Province.

The PLA Eastern Theater Command helped develop ecological breeding projects in Dupi Village of Aoli Township in Jinggangshan, Jiangxi Province.

The whole military has supported 8,351 industrial projects, covering breeding and planting, processing of agricultural products, rural tourism, and PV power generation, lifting the people out of poverty and propelling them to increase income.

To help those poor villages develop industries, the military also resorted to consumption to help the fledgling industries grow and realize circular development.

Relevant departments of the CMC established the mechanisms for poor villages to sell their agricultural and sideline products to barracks and provided the policy basis for the troops to give priority to those villages in procurement.

The “goods from mountains to barracks” program initiated by the Guizhou Provincial Military Command directly benefited more than 1,100 poor households.

Education is the fundamental way to eradicate poverty at root, and providing better education to children in impoverished areas is a significant means of cutting the inter-generational transmission of poverty.

The military has paid close attention to education in its poverty alleviation work. It has helped build 156 Schools along the route of the Long March and 1,544 primary schools in designated villages, and also fostered several branding programs for poverty alleviation through education, such as the “Bayi” student aid program at old revolutionary bases, “fostering children in the new era” initiated by the PLA Army, the “Naval Aimin Primary School”, “Lantian Chunlei Program” and “Lijian student aid program” by the PLA Rocket Force.

Apart from industrial and educational development, medical assistance is another important part of the PLA and PAP forces’ poverty alleviation efforts.

The 113 hospitals in poor counties paired with 74 military hospitals have all reached or surpassed the standard for level-2 hospitals.

The troops have also helped build 1,458 clinics in impoverished villages, some of which are installed with long-distance medical systems so that the villagers can enjoy quality medical service without traveling.

The Joint Logistic Support Force launched the “military doctors to revolutionary bases” program, whereby 1,028 experts provided medical services in 106 districts and counties, including Yan’an city in China’s Shaanxi Province and Ruijin city in Jiangxi Province. The 5th Medical Center of the Chinese PLA General Hospital initiated a program to treat echinococcosis in Xizang autonomous region under which 11 groups of 77 experts, overcoming anoxia and other plateau-related difficulties, treated the local residents on pastures and in yurts. They stayed in the stationary point for more than three months every time, and screened 7,520 patients and cured 657 ones cumulatively.