Ningbo playing big role in cooperation to alleviate poverty

Ningbo, a port city in Zhejiang province with a booming country-leading economy, has been playing a major role in the nation's east-west cooperation for poverty relief since 1996, echoing the call to push for poverty alleviation through coordinated efforts.

Over the past two decades, the city has been offering a helping hand to less-developed regions, including Yanbian Korean autonomous prefecture in Jilin province and Qianxinan Bouyei and Miao autonomous prefecture in Guizhou province.

Zhetuo Benye (Ningbo) Tractor Manufacture Co Ltd, which focuses on producing tractors for agricultural use, invested 200 million yuan ($28.3 million) in October to set up a manufacturing base in Antu county of Yanbian.

The company said it hopes that its Yanbian plant will exert its advantages in developing and manufacturing tractors to cover Northeast China.

The base aims to produce 20,000 tractors each year and generate annual sales value of 1 billion yuan upon completion.

Wang Xinghong, chairman of the tractor firm, said the Yanbian factory has so far employed nearly 30 local people, including five from impoverished households.

"Since last year, employees in Yanbian have been sent in batches to the Ningbo headquarters for training courses," said Wang, hoping that the factory can contribute to boosting the economic growth there and improving people's livelihoods.

Over the next five years, the company will help the local government build an industrial park accommodating companies related to agricultural machinery, according to Wang.

With a planned area of 13.3 hectares, the park is expected to generate a production value of 5 billion yuan each year.

Paddy-sharing, another agricultural project in Yanbian, has proved successful in lifting local farmers' incomes with support from Ningbo residents.

Launched in 2018, the project encourages the residents to claim paddies in Yanbian by paying 1,000 yuan for 50 kilograms of rice grown on these paddies a year, a direct way to benefit local farmers.

Once paddies are claimed, the planting, processing and delivery of rice on the fields can be monitored by buyers in Ningbo via an application on their mobile phones.

The project, involving 1.4-square-kilometers of paddy fields in Yanbian, generates average annual sales revenue of 14 million yuan and has lifted 2,195 low-income people out of poverty.

Learning from the success of the paddy-sharing project, Ningbo and Yanbian are promoting the method for other agricultural products as well, such as livestock, poultry and medical herbs.

Further, the city is helping Yanbian, which is adjacent to Russia and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, to further tap the cross-border e-commerce sector, helping the prefecture fully exert its geographic advantage as a foreign trade port city.

Ningbo Haishangxian Information Technology Co Ltd, a B2B trading platform for seafood businesses, has joined hands with the government and seafood processing and trading companies in Hunchun, a county-level city only 15 kilometers from the Sea of Japan and 4 kilometers from Posyet Bay in Russia, to help solve problems related to financing, online platforms and raw materials purchasing.

The Ningbo company is helping expand the domestic market for seafood products that Hunchun enterprises have imported from Russia and has also explored marketing and sales channels to Japan, the Republic of Korea, Europe and North America based on its internet technologies and platforms.

Moreover, Haishangxian is trying to help Hunchun make the fishery industry smarter by applying intelligent technologies in the management systems inside companies there.

Yu Guobin, general manager of Yanbian Shenghai Industry and Trade Co Ltd, said cooperation with Haishangxian is helping expand channels for sales of their seafood products and the purchase of raw materials. The cooperation is estimated to have contributed more than 20 million yuan in trade value to the Yanbian company.

Qin Jirong contributed to this story.