Hunan focused on vitalization, manufacturing

Central China's Hunan province will make continuous efforts to vitalize the rural areas by consolidating the results of poverty alleviation work and shape the province into a base for the advanced manufacturing industry, senior official said.

Yang Haodong, head of the publicity department of the Hunan Provincial Committee of the Communist Party of China, said in a group interview in Beijing on Wednesday that the report Xi Jinping delivered at the opening session of the ongoing 20th CPC National Congress serves as a blueprint for the province's development in the new era.

He said great changes have occurred in the province, where 6.82 million people in 6,920 poverty-stricken villages shook off poverty after Xi proposed a "targeted poverty reduction" strategy while visiting Shibadong village, a place in which most residents belong to the Miao ethnic group, in November 2013.

"Shibadong village then has become an example for China's targeted poverty reduction policy, and we have also gained some experiences that can be shared with other places," he said. "For example, we encouraged every county to develop two or three industries, which helped 3.56 million people get out of poverty. We also established online platforms to help villagers sell their products, and in 2020, we sold nearly 19 billion yuan ($2.63 billion) worth of product through these platforms."

He said that the province aims to develop into a State-level base for an advanced manufacturing industry, in addition to continuing its rural vitalization efforts.

"Hunan now can produce one aluminum wheel every 10 seconds, one engine every 80 seconds and one excavator every five minutes," he said.

According to him, the province enjoys advantages in developing the manufacturing industry thanks to its state-of-the-art technologies and friendly commercial environment.

"Hunan has two of the world's top five companies in engineering machinery. In Zhuzhou, a hub city for railway transport, we can assemble an electric locomotive in a very short time, as tens of thousands of its parts can be collected within 5 kilometers of Zhuzhou," he said.

He said that the province also placed much emphasis on innovation and technology research to facilitate the manufacturing industry development. According to him, the province so far has one State-level innovation center and 11 provincial-level ones.

Furthermore, its commercial environment is key for the sustainable development of the manufacturing industry.

"All our policies and measures center on company operators. We respect them and give them great support, which has helped boost their morale and confidence in future development," he said.

"Though we've made some achievements in manufacturing development, we can still make efforts to optimize it. We will continue to push forward the province's manufacturing industry development and make our contribution to China's modernization. We believe we can do it."