Kulkarni later shared this heartwarming encounter at the 2025 International Forum on Poverty Governance and Global Development, held in Nujiang on March 29. Co-hosted by the Yunnan Provincial Government, China International Communications Group (CICG) and the China Public Relations Association, the event brought together around 300 diplomats, policymakers and development experts from 34 countries and international organizations, including the United Nations. The discussions centered on how China’s poverty reduction experience—the most extensive in any developing country—can offer valuable insights for global poverty governance.
Once an extremely impoverished region, Nujiang was burdened by its challenging geography, with 98 percent of its land covered by towering mountains and deep valleys, and 76 percent of its farmland spread across steep slopes. However, by December 2020, the prefecture had eradicated absolute poverty. The criteria for poverty elimination in a region include that the per-capita annual net income of its rural residents is above the national poverty line, which was approximately 4,000 yuan ($550) in 2020, that they no longer need to worry about food and clothing, and that they have guaranteed access to compulsory education, basic medical services and safe housing.
Education-based poverty alleviation has been a key pillar of China’s broader anti-poverty efforts and children’s access to basic education is ensured even in remote mountainous regions. “They are the future of China—and the future of the world!” Kulkarni told Beijing Review.
“This year is the final year of China’s five-year transition from poverty alleviation to rural revitalization,” Liu Yongfu, former Director of the State Council Leading Group Office of Poverty Alleviation and Development, said at the forum. The State Council is China’s highest state administrative organ.
Liu added that the country will develop post-transition support policies, enhance poverty prevention mechanisms and establish targeted assistance for low-income rural populations and less developed areas. From 2021 to 2025, China maintained key poverty alleviation measures to ensure no mass return to poverty, including stable financial support, dispatch of resident working teams to formerly poverty-stricken villages and regular monitoring and risk mitigation.
Women of the Nu ethnicity demonstrate traditional hand weaving at a village in Nujiang Lisu Autonomous Prefecture on March 28 (HU JUN)
Multiple measures
Hong Weizhi, Secretary of the Nujiang Prefectural Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC), told the forum that Nujiang has been prioritizing job creation and supporting entrepreneurship to ensure steady improvement of living conditions for all of its 535,000 residents.
The Hexie (meaning harmony in Chinese) Community is a resettlement area comprising more than 2,500 households from 30 villages and of seven ethnic groups, all relocated from inhospitable remote mountainous areas. Since the initiative was launched in December 2019, Nujiang has worked to ensure that the relocatees settle stably and gradually achieve prosperity.
For example, through partnerships with enterprises, the community has established a baseball production workshop and two garment factories, providing stable employment for over 400 residents. Additionally, 44 stalls are available with reduced rents helping 105 households engage in entrepreneurship, a local guide told Beijing Review during a media visit following the forum on March 30. Currently, 5,269 of the community’s 5,627 working-age individuals are in jobs, achieving an employment rate of 93.6 percent. On average, each household has at least two employed members, according to the data provided by local government.
Yangpo Village is located on a mountain at an altitude of over 1,800 meters. In the local Lisu language, “yangpo” means “the first village touched by sunlight.” The village began developing tourism in September 2024. Visitors can enjoy the scenery, take photos, listen to local traditional songs, and dance with the villagers. To date, the village has hosted over 100,000 visitors. The average stay of tourists has increased from 0.6 days at the very beginning to 1.6 days, with 30 percent of visitors coming from outside the prefecture.
As the number of tourists grows, villagers have begun opening restaurants, shops and guesthouses right on their own doorsteps. The occupancy rate of guesthouses is around 50 percent daily, with rooms often in high demand on weekends and holidays. In 2024, the per-capita net income of villagers reached around 18,000 yuan ($2,476), a 36-percent increase from 13,820 yuan ($1,900) in 2021.
Kulkarni said one of the compelling features of China’s poverty reduction and rural revitalization efforts is that it is guided by a holistic vision, integrated planning and the pursuit of effective implementation. The poverty eradication campaign focused on the modernization of agriculture, making optimal use of advances in science and technology; on the non-farming economy, which includes rural tourism, and on the protection of the exceptional features of rural cultural traditions, he added.
Since 2021, Shanghai’s Pudong New Area has begun pairing with Nujiang for assistance and development. Pudong-based companies have started helping the prefecture develop its signature industries. For example, Yunnan Quandouyou Biological Technology Co., which is affiliated with the agricultural company Shanghai Minlongda, processes local agricultural products, such as coffee beans, and introduces its products to the market.
“Our company currently employs 58 people of multiple ethnic minorities, such as the Lisu, Bai, and Yi, in Nujiang, 42 of whom have been relocated from other areas,” Dai Xiuhua, an employee of Quandouyou, told media on March 30, adding that the company’s various industrial chains have helped increase the incomes of around 2,015 rural residents from 458 households.
The 2025 International Forum on Poverty Governance and Global Development takes place in Nujiang Lisu Autonomous Prefecture, Yunnan Province, on March 29 (COURTESY PHOTO)
Contribution recognized
Irina Bokova, former Director General of UNESCO, said at the forum that with poverty being a major problem that human society has faced and continues to face in many parts of the world, China’s economic and social development experience has brought progress to many areas of building a globalized and interconnected world.
Quoting late South African President Nelson Mandela, Bokova said overcoming poverty is the protection of a fundamental human right, the right to dignity and a decent life. She pointed out that China’s story is proof that developing countries can eliminate poverty when endurance, perseverance and a striving spirit are present, underscoring the need to share knowledge to accelerate progress toward the UN’s 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The SDGs are a collection of 17 goals unanimously adopted by world leaders in September 2015 to serve as the blueprint for global development efforts in the years leading up to 2030. They aim to end poverty, fight inequalities and tackle climate change.
“I lived and worked in China for five years as the ambassador of my country. So my experience gives me the right to assert that China, perhaps, more than any other country, is objectively interested in the peaceful development and wellbeing of all countries and peoples. Because only under these conditions can it realize the dream of the great revival of the Chinese nation,” Professor A.A. Tozik, Chairman of Belarus-China Friendship Society and former Deputy Prime Minister of Belarus, said at the forum.
“China not only shares its experience with the world but also actively supports other countries through concrete actions. As a world-leading mega infrastructure comprehensive service provider, China Communications Construction Co. (CCCC) provides high-quality products and services to 158 countries and regions across the world,” Liu Xiang, a board director of CCCC, said at the Forum.
The group has constructed a number of large transportation infrastructure projects including the Mombasa-Nairobi Railway in Kenya and the Chancay Port in Peru, according to Liu. Through these transformative projects, CCCC is supporting global poverty alleviation efforts and contributing to the building of a community with a shared future for humanity, he added.
CICG President Du Zhanyuan said at the forum that as a comprehensive international communications institution, CICG has long been committed to sharing China’s poverty reduction concepts and rural development experiences with international audiences, while effectively narrating stories of countries working together to achieve modernization.
“In recent years, we have published multilingual editions of books such as Up and Out of Poverty (a compilation of President Xi Jinping’s major works on poverty alleviation) and established platforms for global poverty alleviation discussions and knowledge sharing, while consistently sharing global poverty reduction case studies,” Du said. Up and Out of Poverty comprises 29 of Xi’s speeches and articles, as well as photos, from 1988 to 1990, when he was secretary of the CPC Committee of Ningde Prefecture in Fujian Province.
“Moving forward, we will continue to work closely with Yunnan and partners at home and abroad, taking collective action to do our part in the international efforts to eliminate poverty, achieve shared prosperity and build a better world,” he added. –The Daily Mail-Beijing Review news exchange item
