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Guiyang Poverty Alleviation Office

China’s Solution for Precise Poverty

Alleviation
The Case of Guizhou
1st ed. 2021
Guiyang Poverty Alleviation Office
Guiyang Poverty Alleviation Office, Beijing, China

ISBN 978-981-15-7430-6 e-ISBN 978-981-15-7431-3

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-7431-3

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Contents
Government-Led Poverty Alleviation Initiatives
Bend Over Backwards to Reduce Poverty—How Guizhou Tackles
Its Poverty Issue
War on Poverty:​More Committed Than Ever
Poverty Alleviation Through Commercial Development:​
Awakening the Internal Drive for Poverty Alleviation
Poverty Alleviation Through Resettlement:​Removing the Roots
of Poverty
Targeted and Precise Poverty Alleviation:​A Replicable and
Scalable Model
People’s Livelihood is Protected by Enforcing Strict Discipline—
Practices and Insights of Livelihood Supervision
Main Practices
Major Outcomes
Important Insights
Insight 1:​
Insight 2:​
Insight 3:​
Insight 4:​
Leverage Liberal Arts to Alleviate Poverty
Poverty Alleviation Through Public Opinion Creates an
Enabling Environment
Poverty Alleviation Through Culture Enlightens and Inspires
Poverty Alleviation Through Social Sciences Induces Precise
Policies
Paired Poverty Assistance Injects Development Vitality
Qiannan Prefecture:​Succeed in Poverty Alleviation and Enable the
People to Feel the Improvement
Liupanshui City:​A Deep Exploration of Rural Reforms
Main Practices
Outcomes
Review
Qingzhen City:​Effective Efforts of Protecting Ecosystems for
Poverty Alleviation
Weining County:​Experience and Insights of Targeted Poverty
Alleviation
Experience:​Always Focus on “Who Helps Whom and How”
Insight:​Only by Pinpointing the Root Causes Can an Effective
Prescription Be Written
Suggestion:​Speeding Up Targeted Poverty Alleviation in
Guizhou from Three Aspects
Guanling Autonomous County:​Making New Moves in Medical
Poverty Alleviation
Medical Services for Minor Illnesses At Hand Within the
Township
The Model of Attracting Talents with Innovation Enhances
Service Quality
Taking Development Opportunities to Carry Out Targeted
Poverty Alleviation
Industry + Project + Ecology + Intelligence—Road of Poverty
Alleviation and Development in Sinan
Industrial Poverty Alleviation Boosts Four Aspects of
Development
Project-Driven Poverty Alleviation Consolidates the
Development Foundation of the County
 Ecological Poverty Alleviation Creates an Enabling
Environment for the Development of the County
Poverty Alleviation Through Education Improves the Civic
Quality of the Poor
Enterprises-Led Poverty Alleviation Initiatives
“Trinity” Pattern of Poverty Alleviation Creates Synergy
Diverse Assistance Leads to Wealth
Enterprises Contribute to Internal Drive for Growth
Society Helps to Remove the “Mountain” of Poverty
Turning External Assistance into Internal Drive for Building a
Moderately Prosperous Society—On a New Round of Paired
Assistance from Eight Cities to Guizhou
Exchanges and Communication for Leapfrog Development
Significant Input in Infrastructure
Industrial Development Drives Poverty Alleviation
Joint Construction of Industrial Parks Brings Mutual Benefit
Joining Hands to Achieve Moderate Prosperity by Addressing
Weaknesses
Rural Credit Programs Facilitate Poverty Alleviation
Benefit People in Remote Rural Areas with Accurate Financial
Services
Improving Financial Services with Innovation in an All-Out
Drive
Upgrade Rural Credit Program in Keeping with the Times
Targeted, Financial and Industrial Poverty Alleviation Go Hand in
Hand in Innovating and Upgrading Micro-loan Products
Main Practices
Deficiencies and Plans for Improvement
Guizhou Post Helps Poverty Alleviation with the Long March Spirit
Guizhou Post Offers Assistance to New Businesses
Guizhou Post Delivers Products Beyond Provincial Borders
Guizhou Post Presents Colorful Culture to the Outside World
Xingwei Corporation:​A Unique Model of Distributing Five Types of
Shares Opens the Door to Moderate Prosperity in Xiushui Village
New Exploration and New Journey
New Projects and New Initiatives
New Outlook and New Outcomes
New Approaches and New Inspirations
Kiwi Fruit Industry Promotes Poverty Alleviation and Increases
the Income of Farmers in Liupanshui City
Hundred-Li Industrial Corridor with Good Profits and Fantastic
Scenery
Business Clusters Bring Hope to Poor Households
Profit-Rich Businesses Fulfill Fruit Farmers’ Dream of
Moderate Prosperity
Qiannan Rural Credit Cooperative Sets Up “Financial Night
Schools” to Extend Financial Knowledge
The Lack of Financial Knowledge Necessitates Urgent Action
“Financial Night Schools” Were Set Up to Facilitate Knowledge
Transfer and to Alleviate Poverty
Financial Night Schools Bring Benefits to Multiple
Stakeholders, Particularly the General Public
Jinsha County:​Exploring a New Path to Transformation and
Development Driven by Openness
Leading Enterprises Settle in the County and Booming Industry
Drives the Growth of Other Businesses
Develop as a Whole and Rise with Strong Momentum
 Foster Strengths to Make Up for Weaknesses and Overcome
Difficulties
Meitan County:​Promote Poverty Alleviation by “Pairing Hundred
Enterprises with Hundred Villages”
Targeted Poverty Alleviation in Light of Local Conditions
The Charming and Outstanding Scenery on the Highland—A Brief
Report on Guizhou Province's Efforts in Developing Rural Tourism
to Increase Farmers' Income by Upholding Two Bottom Lines
Open up a New Path to Riches by Leveraging Strengths
Beauty in Diversity
Promote Lasting Connectivity
Ocean of Flowers, Sea of Faces and World of Business
Hundred Li of Azalea Bloom Brings Spring to the Village
Peach Flowers Blossoming in Kelou Reflects the People's High
Spirit and the Flourishing Business
The Allure of the Intoxicating Fragrance of Flowers in Shanping
for Tourists
“Green Bank” Was Built in Faraway Mountainous Area—Guizhou
Province Poverty Alleviation Targeted at Modern Specialty and
High-Efficiency Mountain Agriculture
Explore Development Paths Guided by Environmental
Protection
Build Development Platforms Through Demonstration Parks
Broaden the Agricultural Market Through Internet
Technologies
Farmers' Fortune Improves as Guizhou Herbal Medicines Are Sold
Beyond the Mountains—Summary of Guizhou's Efforts to Alleviate
Poverty Through Developing Herbal Medicines
Multi-mode Promotion and Rational Development
 Notable Outcomes for Poverty Alleviation Achieved as a Result
of Innovations in the Interest Chain
The Whole Industrial Chain Blazed a New Trail of Development
for Guizhou Herbal Medicines
Casting a Model of Combating Poverty in China—Summary of the
Poverty Alleviation Model in Haique
Insist on Mobilizing the Masses to Participate in Poverty
Alleviation and Development
Insist on Implementing of Industrial Poverty Alleviation
Insist on Strengthening Infrastructure Construction
Insist on Upholding the Two Bottom Lines of Ecology and
Development
Insist on Promoting All-Round Progress of Social Undertakings
Insist on Consolidating Community-Level Organizations
Insist on Project Implementation
Insist on Expanding the Collective Economy
“Yina Pattern” Provides a Solution to Developing Impoverished
Mountainous Areas
To Pay Special Attention to Those in Need and the Reason
Behind Poverty and Adopt Four Indicators to Find Out if the
Recipient is Really Impoverished
To Take Different Measures for Different People and Ensure
Industrial Support Reaches Every Household in Every Village
To Ensure Everyone Has More Confidence in His Ability and
Receives Education and That Education and Trainings Reach
Every Household in Every Village
To Implement the “4321” Project and to Ensure Paired Support
is Offered in Every Household in Every Village
To Ensure That Every Household in Every Village is Involved in
the Project for Building Beautiful Homes, Renovating
 Dilapidated Houses and Ecological Migration
To Improve People's Well-Being in Light of Their Different
Needs and Build Infrastructure in Every Household in Every
Village
To Enhance Team Building and Pool People's Strength to Seek
Development
To Improve Party Conduct, Uphold Integrity and Strengthen
Project Management
To Take Targeted Measures and Build a Long-Term Mechanism
for Targeted Poverty Alleviation
To Form Units to Offer Help and Form a New Pattern of
Targeted Poverty Alleviation
Review on the Reconstruction Efforts Following the Landslide in
Huashi Village, Dafang County
Background
Strategy
a.​In-Depth Review, Cause Identification and Ecological
Restoration
b.​Strengthen Supervision, Develop Industries and Increase
Livelihood
c.​Agricultural Products Are Sold Online to the Entire Nation
“Qinglong Pattern” Creates Another “Get-Rich on Rocky
Desertification” Miracle
The Impact of the “Qinglong Pattern”
Major Practices
Working Measures
Suggestions on Promoting the “Qinglong Pattern”
Next Steps
Puding County Supports Women Power:​“Made in Courtyard”
Shows Good Momentum
With Deliberation, Households Find Ways to Get Rich
With People’s Hard Work, Courtyard Economy Creates Wealth
Being Practical, the “Two-Way Industrial Chain” Gains Success
One Mu of Tea Garden for Everyone, One Craftsman in Every
Household and E-Commerce in Every Village—Leishan Makes Full
Use of Its Ecological Advantages and Greatly Promotes Targeted
Poverty Alleviation
Build Roads and Bring Wealth to Remote Mountains
Protect Villages and Develop Rural Tourism
One Mu of Tea Garden for Everyone, and Waste Mountains Have
Now Become Golden
A Craftsman in Each Household Guarantees Income
E-Commerce in Every Village Bringing Local Flavors to Every
Corner of the Country
Committing 10,000 Yuan for Share Purchase Generates Wealth
for Farmers
The “Red Engine” in Wanshan District Drives People to Prosperity
Profit Distribution is Transparent
New Agribusiness Increases People’s Income
Paired Assistance Brings Real Results
Party Members Take the Lead
Beautiful Scenery and Rich Local Products Promote the
Development of Tourism Industry and Rural Areas—Tourism-
Based Poverty Alleviation in Qianxinan Prefecture
The Combination of Agriculture and Tourism Brings Changes to
Industrial Structure
The Development of Industries Promotes Rural Economy
 The Development of Tourism Brings Happiness to Rural
Households
Taking Advantage of Resources and Making the Countryside
Beautiful and the People Rich—Taijiang County Accelerated Its
Integrated Development of Agriculture, Culture and Tourism
To Firstly Focus on Top-Level Design
To Give Priority to the Key Task of Project Development
To Promote the Brand of Festival and Cultural Tourism
To Develop the Silver Ornament and Embroidery Making
Industry
To Build Beautiful Villages
Changshun County Explores an Ecological Path for Poverty
Alleviation and Development
Leverage What’s at Hand:​Industry-Based Poverty Reduction
Initiative Increases Farmers’ Income
Different Varieties Develop Concurrently:​Stereoscopic
Agriculture Proves to Be Successful
Transformation and Upgrading:​Grassland Modern Agriculture
Achieves New Development
Government-Led Poverty Alleviation
Initiatives

It is the essential requirement of socialism and an important obligation

of the Party to eradicate poverty, improve the people’s livelihood and
achieve common prosperity. Since the reform and opening-up, through
nationwide, planned, organized and development-driven poverty
alleviation efforts, the number of people living in poverty has been
reduced dramatically and the poor regions have seen significant
improvements. However, the cause of poverty alleviation through
development is still confronted with difficult and heavy tasks and has
entered into a critical phase. It is a swim or sink moment. CPC
committees and governments at all levels need to be more keenly aware
of the urgency and be more active, have clear thinking on poverty
alleviation, and strengthen accountability. We need to take actions that
are more forceful, more targeted, more straightforward and more
sustainable and lay greater emphasis on precise and targeted poverty
aid and alleviation.
—Xi Jinping
© People's Publishing House 2021
Guiyang Poverty Alleviation Office, China’s Solution for Precise Poverty Alleviation
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-7431-3_1

Bend Over Backwards to Reduce

Poverty—How Guizhou Tackles Its
Poverty Issue
Guiyang Poverty Alleviation Office1
(1) Guiyang Poverty Alleviation Office, Beijing, China

June 18, 2015, General Secretary Xi Jinping held a seminar in Guizhou

with senior officials of CPC committees in a number of provinces,
regions and municipalities and pointed out that in the economic
development of the 13th Five-Year Plan period, the weak link of poverty
alleviation must be addressed. Poverty alleviation has already entered a
critical period with the most demanding tasks lying ahead.
Over five months later, from November 27–28, the Conference on
Poverty Alleviation of the CPC Central Committee was held, and an
outcome document entitled “Decisions on Winning the War on Poverty”
was issued at conclusion of the conference, which represents a call to
action to eliminate poverty.
Guizhou is the province with the highest number and widest
distribution of people living in poverty. Since it has the most severe
degree of poverty of any other province, it is the main battleground for
the war on poverty. During the 12th Five-Year Plan period, Guizhou
province lifted 6.56 million people out of poverty. However, that means
that during the 13th Five-Year Plan period, there are still more than 1
million people annually who need to be lifted above the poverty line.
The pressure is still on.
The merits of a policy can be seen in the smiles of our fellow villages
and its demerits will be laid bare by the tears of them.
 The CPC Guizhou Provincial Committee and the Guizhou Provincial
People’s Government have therefore set “inclusive poverty alleviation”
as one of their two strategic actions, promising to carry out “smart,
targeted and effective poverty alleviation” and to “leave no ethnic
group, nor any region, behind”.

War on Poverty: More Committed Than Ever

“The problems we face are the voice of the times”. The key to winning
the war on poverty is to address the problems head-on, to galvanize
different stakeholders, and to create powerful synergy.
In order to eliminate poverty and tackle difficult problems, the CPC
Guizhou Provincial Committee and the Government united and led
people of all ethnicities in an effort to achieve development and to bend
over backwards to eliminate poverty.
In the golden autumn of October 2015, the Guizhou Province
Poverty Alleviation Conference was held in Guiyang, which issued the
Poverty Alleviation and Development “1+10” Document. On December 7,
the “Conference of Guizhou Province on Implementing the Outcomes of
the Conference on Poverty Alleviation of the CPC Central Committee
and Taking Strategic Actions to Achieve Inclusive Poverty Alleviation”
was organized. In the space of less than two months, two conferences
on poverty alleviation were held, which showed the accelerated pace of
Guizhou Province’s poverty alleviation efforts.
Chen Min’er, former Secretary of the CPC Guizhou Provincial
Committee and Chairman of the Standing Committee of Guizhou
Provincial People’s Congress led by example, carried out in-depth field
studies in Weining autonomous county, and chatted with the locals
about their daily lives, about poverty alleviation and about
development. He went deep into the grass roots, interpreting the
policies of poverty alleviation to people in Changshun county, Taijing
county, etc. He pointed out time and again that winning the war on
poverty requires heart, mind and sweat. It is where the capabilities of
officials at all levels are exhibited most vividly.
Sun Zhigang, Deputy Secretary of the CPC Guizhou Provincial
Committee and Governor of Guizhou visited the remote corners of the
Wulin mountain to organize seminars to introduce the strategies of the
CPC Central Committee and identify shortcomings in Tongren city’s
poverty alleviation efforts. He visited places such as Meitan, Zhengan,
Anlong, Wangmo to assess the needs for and conditions of poverty
alleviation. He emphasized that poverty alleviation efforts are the
barometer for wider economic and social development.
In order to alleviate poverty, officials posted to villages went from
door to door to take soundings, to spread the voice of the party, and to
assist rural villages to achieve moderate prosperity.
Officials from the Policy Research Office of the CPC Guizhou
Provincial Committee posted to villages in the autonomous county of
Weining developed a precise assessment matrix of poverty level
consisting of four indices, namely, the house, the level of food stock,
labor capacity, and education. The matrix can help identify and confirm
those who are really in need of aid.
The city of Zunyi recruited 1,433 personnel who are capable of
leading the people to develop projects to be posted to villages as
“project secretaries”, covering 85.3% of all villages in the city. These
project secretaries initiated 918 projects, promoted the
implementation of 1,240 and could bring prosperity of over 350,000
people.
In the Special District of Liuzhi, the triplets Deng Liangui, Deng
Lianqiao, and Deng Lianrui were all assigned to villages as “first
secretaries”. The bigger brother became a “guardian” of harmony, the
middle brother a “master” who teaches skills and the little brother a
“special commissioner” who lead the villagers out of poverty.
Xie Yushi, First Secretary of Yangchang County, Dafang City, wore
out three pairs of shoes visiting villagers door-to-door. His two
notebooks are thick with the conditions of villages and opinions of
villagers.
In 2015, officials posted to villages in Guizhou altogether made over
9.8 million visits to meet the locals, help put forward over 250,000
proposals to solve problems, did over 357,000 good and practical
deeds, and secured poverty alleviating funding of 3.51 billion.
“High spirits are contagious.” Though located in a barren
mountainous region, Guizhou is endowed with a “poverty alleviation
spirit” founded on political firmness, operational prowess, strict
discipline, strong work style, bonds with the people and selfless
contribution. With such spirit, we belted out a stirring song of fighting
with nature and battling with poverty.

Poverty Alleviation Through Commercial

Development: Awakening the Internal Drive for
Poverty Alleviation
Shepeng, the most remote of villages in Pugu town, Pan county,
Liupanshui city, didn’t even have a proper road three years ago. The
farming there was only for subsistence. The villagers were leaving for
cities to seek jobs. In 2015, the income per person in this village,
however, rose to 11,260 yuan, three times the level three years ago. No
one is left below the poverty line. It is amazing to see farmers carrying
hoes and sickles are now commuting to work by coaches.
“It is all thanks to Tao Zhengxue and to the rural industrial park just
at our doorstep”, said Tao Zhengneng, 53, with a wide smile. Tao
Zhengxue, an entrepreneur who returned home to found the Guizhou
Niangniang Mountain High Altitude Wetland Ecological Agriculture
Demonstration Zone, encouraged the rural collective to buy in with
collective property rights and villagers to buy in with money and
techniques, thus stimulating local agriculture.
In recent years, the city of Liupanshui creatively proposed reforms
to turn resources into capital, turn money into shares, and turn farmers
into shareholders. It focuses on the development of the collective
economy as a critical measure to eliminate poverty. Wang Chenggang,
Director-General of the Bureau for Poverty Alleviation, said that the
reforms have turned farmers from bystanders into participators, the
economy from a small-farm based one into a market-based one, and the
agricultural sector from a traditional one into a modern one, thus
bonding farmers, collectives and business entities together with shared
operations and joint stock-holding.
It has become a fundamental experience of Guizhou to grow its
economy and reduce poverty through developing its various industries.
Relevant personnel from the Office for Poverty Alleviation of
Guizhou Province revealed that since the beginning of the 12th Five-
Year Plan period, the government of Guizhou has invested over 10
billion yuan of poverty alleviation funds into project development in
various industries, with over 40,000 projects implemented in villages
and producing a total output of 81.3 billion yuan. Depending on the
available resources, market orientation and regional economic
characteristics, unique ecological industries such as vegetable, fruit, tea,
herbs, potato, beef and mutton industries received strong support. Now
Guizhou’s poverty alleviation industries are distributed in a well-
balanced manner, with animal and plant oil industry in the east, potato
in the west, herb in the south, tea in the north, vegetable in the center,
and dries goods, beef and mutton on the surface.
“Developing tourism helps poor regions to be able to generate their
own wealth, helps enable poor people to become more cultured, and
helps protect nature, ecology and culture”, said Chen Min’er in an
interview with China.com.cn. Rural tourism represents the most
realistic, the most effective and the fastest way out of poverty.
Mr. Mu, a pottery maker in Goupa Village, Fengxiang County, Zunyi
City, is a direct beneficiary of rural tourism. He said that since tourism
took off in his village, his pottery business has been booming. During
the labor day holiday in 2015, he made over 2,000 yuan per day. Due to
increased demand, he now has to hire 3–4 extra hands. In the past, his
annual income was only 20,000–30,000 yuan, last year, it exceeded
100,000 yuan.
Survey shows that now over 3,000 villages in Guizhou have rural
tourism projects, receiving 159 million tourists in 2015, accounting for
42.4% of all tourists received by Guizhou Province. Income from rural
tourism was 70.59 billion yuan, accounting for 20% of total tourism
revenue of Guizhou Province. This industry employs 2,876,100 people,
benefiting over 5.77 million people. Just during the 12th Five-Year Plan
period, 647,000 people escaped poverty through rural tourism.
As Ye Tao, Director-General of the Office for Poverty Alleviation of
Guizhou Province said, these industries maximally cover poor regions
and poor people, enabling poor people to become more cultured and to
upgrade their trade.

Poverty Alleviation Through Resettlement:

Removing the Roots of Poverty
Of the 4.93 million of rural poor in Guizhou, most are poorly educated
and live deep in the mountains, on barren mountains or in remote
areas. Liu Yuankun, Deputy Governor of Guizhou, thinks that lifting
them out of poverty is a herculean task.
Poverty alleviation through relocation, a measure Premier Li
Keqiang says can address the root causes of poverty, is targeted mainly
at these people living in hostile environments.
In “Happy Haven”, a relocation community in Wuolong Village,
Zhengchang Township, Suiyang County, big houses are set against green
mountains and emerald waters, with happiness in the air.
“We’ve moved here for a year now and I live with my son. The air
here is great.” Said Li Meimei, 60, smilingly. Beside the Wolong village is
“10,000-Mu Honeysuckle” Demonstration Base (1 mu = 0.067 hectare).
Thanks to this base, on which the livelihood of the villagers depends,
the life here is booming. Household income of locals running
restaurants and hotels from their own houses exceeds 80,000 yuan
annually.
Poverty alleviation through relocation has become a highlight in
Guizhou’s war on poverty. During the 12th Five-Year Plan period,
Guizhou Provincial Government built 1.54 million units of social
housing in cities, renovated 1.92 decrepit rural houses, and relocated
660,000 people.
At the same time, being the top priority in the war against poverty
(other priorities being poverty alleviation through industrial
development, building a green Guizhou, infrastructure construction,
poverty alleviation through health and education, and social safety net),
poverty alleviation through relocation represents the key to Guizhou
Province’s efforts to build a moderately prosperous society in all
respects.
On January 14, Sun Zhigang emphasized that the Guizhou
authorities should, in line with the requirements on precise and
targeted poverty aid and alleviation, enhance the precision of their
poverty alleviation efforts by compiling a task chart, by issuing notices
to see to the completion of the tasks, and by crossing off completed
tasks one by one, so as to decidedly win the war on poverty.
On January 25, the Guizhou Provincial Government issued the
Implementation Plan of the Poverty Alleviation through Relocation
Project of Guizhou, 2016, which clearly committed a total investment of
27 billion yuan on the six key areas of “construction, relocation,
employment, social security, amenities and services, and exit”, thus
ensuring that in 2015, Guizhou Government can relocate 450,000
people, among whom 300,000 are living below the poverty line.

Targeted and Precise Poverty Alleviation: A

Replicable and Scalable Model
In poverty alleviation, precision makes all the difference.
Guizhou laid great emphasis on “precision”, focusing on households
with resources and labor capability but without access to wealth-
creating activities, households plunged into poverty as a result of
supporting education or major illness, households with limited access
to infrastructure, technologies and capital, and households with no
income generating activities and incapable of lifting themselves out of
poverty. The government upheld “six precisions” and “six measures
implemented down to villages and households”, targeted the root
causes of poverty and carried out “targeted therapy” to surgically
remove pockets of poverty, thus offering reliable, actionable, replicable
and scalable “Guizhou experience”.
The work on poverty alleviation has undergone three changes. The
approach has changed from individual project support to poverty
alleviation through commercial development. The priority has changed
from support for individual villages and households to a balance
between regional and targeted poverty alleviation. The enabler of
poverty alleviation is changing from the government to the the society
at large.
A preliminary precision poverty alleviation mechanism has been set
up in Guizhou province. The “33668” action plan for poverty alleviation
was implemented in an ironclad fashion. The “six measures
implemented down to villages and households”, namely, officials
reaching down to villages and households to support them, commercial
support down to villages and households, education and training
provided down to villages and households, renovation of decrepit
houses down to villages and households, economic migrants relocated
down to villages and households, and infrastructure provided down to
villages and households, along with the “six well-off projects”, namely
clean water, sufficient electricity supply, well-paved roads, good
communication facility, well-off housing and spruced-up villages are
key poverty-alleviation measures that have benefited the tens of
thousands of households in poor, mountainous regions. “Objects are
targeted with precision, projects are arranged with precision, funding is
utilized with precision, measured are implemented with precision,
personnel are dispatched with precision and the outcomes are achieved
with precision.”
Guizhou blazed a new trail in enabling abutting regions of abject
poverty to achieve prosperity through developing industries with local
features while protecting the ecology and environment. A number of
best practices are thus concluded. For example, there are the “Bijie
experiment”, which features the pooling of strengths and advantages of
all sides; the “Qinglong model” that plants grass to conserve water and
soil, cultivates cattle to increase income and develops disaster
prevention and relief industry; the “Changshun practice” of mountain
agriculture development which improves the input-output ratio
through the combination of animal husbandry and farming, the joint
cultivation of tall and short plants, and complementing tall plants with
short plants; the “Yinjiang experience” that features regional
development and coordinated progress, with whole villages and
townships lifted out of poverty; the “Weining practice” that leverages
strengths while concealing weaknesses, consolidates resources and
makes adjustments to meet local conditions; the “Yina way” that
emphasizes mutual complementation between party-building and
poverty alleviation efforts, the achievement of moderate prosperity, and
the strengthening of “three teams”, namely, leadership team, specialist
team and organization staff team. The four ways to precisely identify
poverty cases have been introduced nationwide.
Guizhou also has “six firsts” in its poverty alleviation efforts. It is the
first to adopt the incentive policy of removing the classification of
poverty while keeping relevant preferential policies. It is the first to
implement an “expansive” approach, with village as a basic unit.
Poverty alleviation efforts merge together to cover entire townships,
their abutting townships and then an even larger area. It is the first to
adopt an integrated poverty support model that pools resources and
strengths to tackle poverty featuring direct communication with
provincial leaders, direct responsibility by competent provincial level
departments, and organization and implementation by county and
township governments. It is the first to introduce the “Performance
Assessment on Economic and Social Development for Leadership
Teams and Team Members in Poor Counties” so as to fully leverage the
role of performance assessments. It is the first to achieve complete
coverage of poor households by officials posted to villages. Guizhou is
also the first province to dispatch officials to visit every poor village
and poor household in order to enhance the precision of poverty aid
and alleviation efforts.
Guizhou implements two parallel strategies of Big Poverty
Alleviation and Big Data. From Ye Tao’s perspective, “poverty alleviation
cloud” represents the alignment between Big Poverty Alleviation and
Big Data, and is an inevitable choice for Guizhou to escape poverty and
achieve moderate prosperity along with the rest of the country.
“We are fully confident with the strategies of Cloud+Terminal and
Big Data+Connectivity”, said Ye Tao. Going forward, Guizhou will apply
big data technologies to policy frameworks and platforms to achieve
precision management and to promote the Big Poverty Alleviation
strategy.
Guizhou’s policies to achieve moderate prosperity in
synchronization with the country at large is what the people’s heart
desires, and its promises of eliminating poverty are becoming a reality.
By Peng Qiwei, Yang Yi, Zhang Heng & Cheng Xing.

Contemporary Guizhou.
© People's Publishing House 2021
Guiyang Poverty Alleviation Office, China’s Solution for Precise Poverty Alleviation
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-7431-3_2

People’s Livelihood is Protected by

Enforcing Strict Discipline—Practices
and Insights of Livelihood Supervision
Guiyang Poverty Alleviation Office1
(1) Guiyang Poverty Alleviation Office, Beijing, China

Livelihood supervision is an important measure of Guizhou province to

deepen the reforms of grass root discipline inspection and to improve
the livelihood of the grass roots. It is a crucial means through which
CPC committees carry out work style and clean governance campaigns.
Since 2013, the CPC Guizhou Provincial Committee and the Provincial
Government attached great importance to livelihood supervision,
undertook trials and innovations, issued documents such as Notice on
Setting up Livelihood Project Supervision Teams in all Townships and
Counties in Guizhou Province and Opinions on the Province-Wide Three-
Year Action Plan to Encourage Clean Practices in Livelihood
Improvement, and clarified the targets, tasks and guarantee measures
for livelihood supervision, thus effectively making livelihood
improvement policies accessible to the grass roots and safeguarding
their interests. In the first half of 2015, Guizhou dispatched 1,482
livelihood supervision teams, identified 91,386 problems, investigated
3,809 cases, meted out party disciplinary actions to 2,058 people, and
sent 459 people to law-enforcement agencies. All told, a total of
319,944,800 yuan was involved. To further summarize the practices
and experience of Guizhou in livelihood supervision, we have recently
carried out a province-wide study on livelihood supervision.
Main Practices
(1) Strengthen organizational guarantee and promote comprehensive
coverage. According to the overall requirements for livelihood
supervision, all cities and counties set up leading groups on
livelihood supervision, and all towns and townships set up
livelihood supervision groups, with secretaries of county-level
committees on discipline work or members of the standing
committees of county-level discipline inspection commissions as
chairmen; secretaries of town-or township-level committees on
discipline work as vice-chairmen; and town-or township-level
discipline inspection staff and competent, brave young officials
selected from other government departments as group members.
The responsibilities of these groups are to supervise the
implementation of important decisions, inspect the work of CPC
committees and governments at town and township levels,
investigate law or rule breaking activities of middle managers at
town and township levels, clarify the contours of authority of
officials from livelihood supervision groups, and carry out back
office functions such as arranging cars and offices. At the same
time, coordinators and contact persons are selected from officials
posted to villages, retired officials and members of village
(community, school or hospital) affairs committees who are
responsible, authoritative, and trusted by the people. They
participate in livelihood supervision, and process reports and
complaints from the people. Thus, a multi-layered livelihood
supervision network is set up, extending to city, county, township
and village levels and with presence at villages, neighborhoods,
schools, hospitals, government agencies and enterprises. For
example, in Libo County, Anlong County and Xixiu District, their
secretaries of committees on discipline work were appointed as
chairmen of livelihood supervision groups. They provided back
office functions such as arranging cars, offices and law
enforcement equipment and ensured that town and township
livelihood supervision groups can bring to bear their role of
stamping out corruption and improving livelihood through
supervision.
(2) Strengthen institutional building and promote compliant
operations. The study shows that cities and counties set up-in an
innovative fashion, in line with the provincial requirements for
building livelihood supervision institutions, and taking into
consideration the conditions on the ground–mechanisms and
institutions such as the responsibility description and
management system of livelihood supervision group, practices to
promote supervision, joint conferences, circuit inspection and
interviews, registration of livelihood projects, reports on major
livelihood projects, whistle-blowing channel, exposure of law or
rule infractions, data reporting, and cross-examination. This
comprehensive network of mechanisms and institutions are
managed and run with full compliance. In the livelihood
supervision of Pan County, for example, a “three checks and one
visit” system was established, namely, checking the work flow
record of competent authorities in implementing livelihood
projects, checking the problems encountered by competent
authorities in implementing livelihood projects and whether they
have been dealt with promptly, checking the compliance level and
loopholes in the operation of livelihood projects, and visiting the
people to see their level of satisfaction with livelihood projects.
Such practices effectively ensure that livelihood projects, funding
and policies are successfully implemented. Also, counties like
Anlong County, Fenggang County, Dafang County, Yinjiang County,
Zhenfeng Country and Liuzhi Special District set up a categorized
dossier management system that clarifies the content of each
category so that there is no room for abuse in the livelihood
projects. They have also promoted the standardization of
livelihood project registration. A letters and calls, and whistle-
blowing channel was established, with information board of
livelihood supervision groups, whistle-blowing box on livelihood
projects, contact card to supervise these projects and a whistling-
blowing phone number. Such a channel encourages the people to
partake in the supervision efforts and makes it easier for
livelihood project supervision groups to discover clues, identify
problems and solve them. An information transparency system
was also set up, disclosing the progress of livelihood projects and
 the use of funds. The system also includes a search function that
allows the people to easily and conveniently look up information
on the implementation of livelihood projects.
(3) Strengthen promotion and publicity to encourage everyone to be a
part of it. Promotion is a key to successful livelihood work. Our
study has found out that CPC committees and governments at all
levels in the province and livelihood supervision groups attach
great importance to the promotion of livelihood supervision work.
They fully utilized new media outlets such as SMS, the Internet,
Wechat and TV as well as traditional ones such as banners,
newspapers, information boards, village meetings, art
performances and letters to carry out promotion on the policy
documents issued at all levels of the government, the purpose and
significance of livelihood supervision, and the responsibilities,
scope and channels of livelihood supervision groups. Such
promotion reaches village groups, schools, hospitals and
communities, enhances the people’s knowledge of livelihood
supervision, and mobilizes the people to participate in
supervision. Such efforts have increased the degree of the people’s
engagement and enabled them to actively report clues to identify
problems. At the same time, the authorities used cases of rule or
law infractions happening in the people’s midst as warnings to
strengthen the deterrence against corruption, to educate village
and township officials to resist corruption, to enable the people to
see the outcomes of livelihood supervision efforts, and to create
an environment of cleanliness, uprightness and self-discipline. To
take Pan County for example, at market days, leaflets and
pamphlets are distributed to the people to tell them about the
practices, purposes and significance of livelihood supervision.
Another example is in Libo County, where letters on the purposes,
scope and methods of livelihood supervision are written to all
residents in the county.

(4) Leverage the role of livelihood supervision to promote clean

governance. Livelihood supervision is a crucial means through
which CPC committees carry out work style and clean governance
campaigns and an important pathway for discipline inspection
 departments at all levels to fulfill their supervisory functions. Our
study has found that local governments have provided strong
guarantee in human, financial and material resources to livelihood
supervision groups to enable them to supervise, to stamp out
corruption and to safeguard people’s wellbeing. At the same time,
livelihood supervision groups have, in line with the Three-Year
Action Plan to Encourage Clean Practices in Livelihood
Improvement issued jointly by the CPC Guizhou Committee and
the Provincial Government, fulfilled their functions and
obligations and made detailed action plans. They supervise
routine livelihood matters, work style of officials, welfare projects
and fund use; focus on critical livelihood areas such as study grant
for vocational schools and high schools, subsidies for rural
residents to buy household appliances, subsidies for micro-
enterprises; and prioritize the investigation and punishment of
corrupt activities in livelihood policy implementation, and
utilization and management of funds for livelihood projects,
particularly those that continue unabated after the 18th National
Congress of the CPC. They carry out supervision and inspection in
an in-depth manner, hold rule or law breakers accountable, make
sure that the corrupt officials have nowhere to hide, and properly
fulfill their duty of livelihood inspection. To take Liuzhi Special
District for example, in order to leverage the role of livelihood
supervision groups, it drafted and issued the Implementation Plan
for Inspection Actions of Livelihood Project Supervision Groups of
Liuzhi Special District, which laid out the priorities for supervision.
The special district also carried out inspection and investigations
in an in-depth manner, and fully leveraged the role of livelihood
project supervision as a “sentinel” and a “night watchman” for the
people.

Major Outcomes
(1) Livelihood supervision has become more powerful. In 2013, Bijie
City innovatively set up livelihood project supervision groups in
towns and townships under its administration. By the first half of
 2015, with coordinated arrangement of the CPC Guizhou
Committee and the Provincial Government, a province-wide
network of livelihood supervision had been set up, with 1,482
livelihood supervision groups. 168 of them are in Guiyang City,
244 in Zunyi City, 109 in Liupanshui City, 86 in Anshun City, 265 in
Bijie City, 172 in Tongren City, 206 in Qiandongnan Prefecture,
104 in Qiannan Prefecture, and 128 in Qianxinan Prefecture. At
the same time, establishing livelihood supervision groups can also
help strengthen the official teams in towns and townships.
Through selecting retired officials, officials posted to villages, and
members of village (community, school or hospital) affairs
committees who are authoritative and trusted as coordinators and
contact persons of livelihood supervision groups, more and more
people become part of the livelihood supervision efforts. There
are now an average of 3.5 people working in discipline inspection
and supervision at town and township levels, up from 1.5 people.
(2) Livelihood issues have been effectively addressed. Provincial,
municipal and county level authorities have always attached great
significance to livelihood supervision. Livelihood supervision
groups have meticulously carried out their duties, proactively
identified problems and investigated cases, enforced laws and
disciplines in an ironclad fashion, investigated and dealt with
various rule or law breaking activities in a strict manner,
responded to the calls of the people for better livelihood in a
pragmatic way, solved issues in the area of people’s livelihood, and
forged an upright political environment. From 2014 to the first
half of 2015, the 1482 livelihood supervision groups in the
province, through inspection campaigns and processing letters
and calls, identified 150,170 problems, registered 7,514 cases,
meted out party disciplinary actions to 5,944 people, and sent 907
people to law-enforcement agencies. All cases involve 930 million
yuan. Such actions created huge deterrence against activities that
undermine the interests of the masses, solved problems of great
concern for the people in livelihood projects, promoted the
improvement of relations between officials and the masses, and
facilitated the stability and harmony of the society.
(3) “Three changes” have been achieved in discipline inspection work.
Setting up livelihood supervision groups further deepened the
reforms of discipline inspection system at the grass roots,
promoted the continued improvement of discipline supervision
institutions and mechanisms, implemented the “two sets of
responsibilities” of CPC committees and discipline inspection
commissions, enabled towns and townships to achieve transition
in their discipline inspection management system from dual
management to vertical management, strengthened the
leadership of higher-level discipline inspection commissions over
lower-level ones, and enhanced the initiative for supervision, rule
and law enforcement. At the same time, through establishing
livelihood supervision groups and repeatedly carrying out
supervision and inspection, grass root discipline inspection
organizations rediscovered the entry point and the foundation of
their work, thus effectively promoted themselves to fulfill their
main mission and duty of discipline inspection, investigated a
number of rule or law breaking cases, punished grass root officials
involved in them, and successfully carried forward the work on
fighting corruption and advocating cleanliness in the grass roots.
A survey shows that, in 2014, livelihood supervision groups in the
province investigated an average of 2.5 cases, thus reversing the
situation where, for many years, discipline inspection
commissions at town or township levels investigated no case at
all.

Important Insights
Insight 1:
Leaders’ focus is a necessity. The focus of leaders represents a strong
guarantee for the orderly progress and greater achievements of
livelihood supervision work. Since Bijie city innovatively set up
livelihood project supervision groups in towns and townships in 2013,
leaders of the CPC Central Committee such as Wang Qishan and Zhao
Hongzhu have attached great importance to livelihood supervision,
given full confirmation, and promoted the efficient operation of
livelihood supervision work. Zhao Kezhi, Secretary of the CPC Guizhou
Provincial Committee, Chen Min’er, Governor of Guizhou, and Song
Xuantao, Member of the Standing Committee and Secretary of
Discipline Inspection Commission of the CPC Guizhou Provincial
Committee, wrote a number of memos to make arrangements and to
ensure that livelihood supervision work yields concrete results. For
example, in 2014, Secretary Zhao Kezhi and Governor Chen Min’er
wrote a memo, requiring the experience of Bijie City in organizing
livelihood project supervision groups to be extracted and applied
province-wide. At this order, provincial authorities and departments at
all levels acted promptly to set up livelihood supervision groups at
towns and townships throughout the province, clarified job
responsibilities and funding guarantees, implemented livelihood
supervision, and investigated and dealt with grass root corruption in an
in-depth manner. Such efforts yielded good results and won accolades
from the people.

Insight 2:
Reforms must be deepened to improve livelihood. Setting up livelihood
supervision groups is a salubrious exploration to improve grass root
discipline inspection institutions and a crucial measure to promote
reforms of discipline inspection institutions and mechanisms. The
above-mentioned study on livelihood supervision work shows that no
matter in Bijie City, where the livelihood supervision groups started, or
in counties like Libo, Pan and Anlong County, where these groups were
set up in line with the directives of the CPC Provincial Committee and
the Provincial Government, they all seek to comprehensively deepen
reforms, and take livelihood supervision group as an important
measure to promote reforms of grass root discipline inspection. They
have adopted a problem-oriented approach, strengthened senior-level
planning, formulated and introduced a number of discipline inspection
mechanisms such as registration of livelihood projects, management
report of livelihood projects, management guidelines for livelihood
supervision, and implementation plans. At the same time, with the
courage to “cut to the bones to treat disease” and the level of
determination that “will leave an imprint even on an iron bar”, they
have prioritized livelihood projects and funds, started with the issues of
the most direct impact and of the greatest concern for the people,
steadfastly investigated and punished corrupt activities in livelihood
areas. By having the determination to go the extra mile, they have
created a virtuous social environment.

Insight 3:
Teams must be strengthened and discipline enforcement must be strict.
Strengthening the teams for grass root discipline inspection is the
foundation for successful livelihood supervision and an important
guarantee to make sure that supervision covers every nook and cranny.
At the same time, strict enforcement of discipline is the prerequisite for
inspection officials to be incorruptible and a crucial measure to ensure
the success of livelihood supervision. The study has found that all
towns and townships in the province have strengthened their
livelihood supervision teams, selected coordinators and contact
persons from officials posted to villages, retired officials and members
of village (community, school or hospital) affairs committees who are
responsible, authoritative, and trusted by the people, extended their
reach to each corner, and put in place highly effective livelihood
supervision. At the same time, they encouraged members of livelihood
supervision groups to study the party charter and the best practices in
discipline inspection so as to equip them with knowledge of rules and
regulations, determination to solve cases, and capability to process
cases. Having acquired such a strong skills set, they have successfully
dealt with cases and solved the problems in livelihood area.

Insight 4:
The masses much be relied upon in order to eliminate corruption. The
masses are the foundation for successful livelihood supervision and an
important driving force for eliminating corruption in grass root
livelihood projects. The study has found that authorities at various
levels have utilized new and traditional media outlets to launch
publicity campaigns on livelihood and mobilize the people, so as to
enhance the people’s knowledge and recognition of livelihood
supervision work. At the same time, through various channels such as
contact information of members of livelihood supervision groups,
whistle-blowing mailboxes and contact cards, the people are mobilized
to actively participate in supervision and report clues of cases. Relying
on the power of the people, they eliminated corruption in agriculture-
related projects and funds, ensured that livelihood policies were fully
implemented, and enabled the people to receive concrete benefits.
© People's Publishing House 2021
Guiyang Poverty Alleviation Office, China’s Solution for Precise Poverty Alleviation
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-7431-3_3

Leverage Liberal Arts to Alleviate

Poverty
Guiyang Poverty Alleviation Office1
(1) Guiyang Poverty Alleviation Office, Beijing, China

A great age calls for great spirit and the cause of poverty alleviation in
Guizhou needs to gather tremendous strength. Since 2015, Guizhou
province’s publicity authorities have actively committed themselves to
the strategic actions of “Big Poverty Alleviation”, consolidated strengths
and resources, and distributed them in a smart fashion. They have
undertaken four major actions, namely, poverty alleviation through
public opinion, poverty alleviation through culture, poverty alleviation
through social sciences and poverty alleviation through paired
assistance. They have thus spread the voice for good and forged
positive energy, providing strong incentive, public support and cultural
conditions for poverty alleviation and achieving moderate prosperity in
parallel with the country at large.

Poverty Alleviation Through Public Opinion Creates

an Enabling Environment
Comrade Jiang Shikun, former Secretary of the CPC Qinglong County
Committee, worked in Qinglong for 6 years, focused on poverty
alleviation, united and led the 330,000 people in Qinglong to work
together in a practical and industrious manner to tackle the issue of
development. Considering the fact that Qinglong is a poor county with
serious rocky desertification issues, comrade Jiang decided to adapt to
the conditions, planted grass and raised cattle, thus creating the
“Qinglong model” where economic development, ecological protection
and poverty alleviation go hand in hand. Though he blazed a trail for
the poor people to escape poverty, he himself couldn’t escape death as
he collapsed in his office due to illness caused by overwork.
In June 6, Guizhou Daily, Contemporary Guizhou, Guizhou Radio and
TV Station, and the website gog.​com published special reports on the
deeds of Jiang Shikun respectively entitled “The Innocent Heart and the
Deep Love of a Public Servant”, “A Life-Long Commitment to Be the Sky
over People’s Heads”, “A Heart Filled with the People and Responsibility
for Them”, and “A Sincere County Secretary”. Other new and traditional
media outlets in Guizhou also ran stories from various perspectives. A
number of websites with nationwide audience, such as people.​com.​cn,
ifeng.​com, sohu.​com, thepaper.​cn, and hxnews.​com also reprinted these
reports, which received pouring public enthusiasm.
Officials and residents in Qinglong County said that comrade Jiang
Shikun was a role model, that they would follow his footsteps to lift
people out of poverty, and that they would fulfill his last wish of going
all the way to win the war on poverty.
From June 12–14, Guizhou daily again published op-eds on the front
page for three days, calling all party members and officials in the
province to take after him.
Promoting role models can ignite the passion for advancement, and
spreading positive energy will generate the driving force for leapfrog
development.
Big poverty alleviation requires strong publicity. As the main
battlefield of the war on poverty in China, Guizhou has led the way in
launching actions to alleviate poverty through publicity, issued the
Implementation Plan of Poverty Alleviation through Publicity, promoted
the publicity authorities to strengthen paired assistance, foundation
building, public opinion guidance and news services, and thus created
an enabling public opinion environment and strong intellectual
impetus for winning the war on poverty.
On May 6, a reporting campaign entitled “At the Front Line of the
War against Poverty: Resident Reporting on 50 Priority Counties for
Poverty Alleviation in Guizhou” was launched. Since then, Guizhou
Daily Media Group assigned reporting duties of various regions to
individual journalists who have been dispatched to the above-
mentioned 50 counties to carry out reporting and social studies for a
period of 5 years. Such a large scale reporting campaign will provide a
panoramic, three-dimensional and incisive record and observation of
the grand cause of poverty alleviation in Guizhou. Such an observation
will include the poverty alleviation policies in the province, the
reporting of situation on the ground of villages seeking to escape
poverty, the experience of grass roots officials on poverty alleviation,
the wishes for and experience of poverty alleviation of the local
residents, and issues and considerations in the cause of poverty
alleviation.
Guizhou Radio and TV Station have been running a program entitled
“Win the War on Poverty and Succeed in Achieving Moderate
Prosperity”. Its channels have, in line with their audience and features,
scanned the latest developments of poverty alleviation in Guizhou
Province, and vividly presented the stories of people who made it rich
and the deeds of officials posted to villages who paired with households
to help them escape poverty. A poverty alleviation action plan for the
13th Five-Year Plan period was drafted, with particular focus on
poverty alleviation through publicity, information, commerce and
party-building.
From shore to shore it seems wide at high tide,
Before fair wind a single sail is lifting.
Media outlets at the central level, overseas, inside and outside the
province have been strengthening public opinion and role model
guidance, focusing on actions to alleviate poverty and initiatives to help
the poor, and continuously reporting experience and achievements of
Guizhou’s fight against poverty via channels such as newspapers, TV,
radio, websites and Wechat. Such efforts have created a public opinion
environment that supports poverty alleviation and have generated
great positive energy.

Poverty Alleviation Through Culture Enlightens and

Inspires
In Nenzhai Village, Jinping County, the gongs are played, the villagers
are dancing, the houses are lit up and the residents are happy. Cultural
infrastructure facilities such as the culture square, the village library
and the village singing square have enriched the people’s cultural life,
boosted their spirits, and brought about a positive, pragmatic and
industrious folk attitude.
“Reading books at the library could solve many problems”. During
the spring cultivation season in 2016, in Jiuchuan Town, Huangping
County, many farm machine operators went to the local library to
absorb knowledge. Technical guides such as Farm Mechanization in
Guizhou, Guides for Farm Machine Operators, Practical Techniques for
the Mechanization of Joint Harvesting and Protective Farming are the
books of choice for farm machine operators. In recent years, this town
has extended knowledge on farm machines via the local library,
enhanced the operational capability and sense of safety of farm
machine operators, and by doing so, cultivated a group of modern
farmers.
In the village library in Yongle Township, Nanming District, Guiyang
City, books on farming and animal husbandry, interior design and
decoration, automobile repair, and health and nutrition are quite
popular with farmers. Many farmers, inspired by the books, started to
do related businesses.
There is a myriad of booming cultural activities. Artists have gone
deep into the grass roots to write couplets in Chinese calligraphy to give
to the people, to shoot family photos for them, to give them books and
paintings as gifts, to conduct art performances, to organize seminars
and lectures on ethnic minority literature, on folk arts, etc., and to
provide art training to talented youths. Such activities have been very
well-received by the people.
Activities that bring culture to the grass roots serve as a platform to
enrich the leisure time of farmers, enhance the civility of the masses,
and cultivate modern farmers with ideal, morality and knowledge. They
facilitate the transition from aid to self-sustained wealth generation in
poverty alleviation.
When Big Poverty Alleviation encountered Big Data, Guizhou
Province introduced a “smarter” project to alleviate poverty through
culture. In March 8, 2016, the Provincial Government made
arrangements to invest 1.761 billion yuan in 2016 to ensure that the
Colorful Guizhou “Radio and TV Cloud” project can reach every village.
 The Colorful Guizhou “Radio and TV Cloud” project utilizes
technologies such as Big Data and cloud computing, via digital TV and
radio transmission channel, to send radio programs, necessary
information for farmers on policies, livelihood and business
opportunities, and the Internet to the tens of thousands of rural
households. This project allows the farmers not only to enjoy the
convenient services of “Guizhou on the cloud”, but also to benefit from
the opportunities to sell their products to the outside. Therefore, this is
not just a political and poverty alleviation project that increased rural
income, but also a project that instills culture into farmers, enrich their
mind, and wins their hearts.
The cultural system in the province holds dear the people’s
fundamental cultural rights and therefore implemented around 11
projects, such as grass root modern public culture service system,
village-level comprehensive cultural service center in poor regions, the
sharing of radio, TV and online education resources and information for
poverty alleviation, reduction or waiver of radio and TV fees for poor
households, promotion of the culture cloud poverty alleviation service
platform, building of village film playing venues, bringing arts to the
grass roots, commercialization of intangible cultural heritage of the
Colorful Guizhou, poverty alleviation through rural cultural tourism and
e-commerce, malls and tourism in the mountains in the Colorful
Guizhou, and the coverage of Radio and TV Cloud in rural areas in the
Colorful Guizhou. The above-mentioned projects can help educate,
encourage, benefit and enrich the people through culture.
These efforts have set the scene for something splendid. The
cultural authorities at all levels have introduced further measures and
pooled resources to continue very steadily to lay a solid cultural
foundation for poverty alleviation.

Poverty Alleviation Through Social Sciences

Induces Precise Policies
At the end of 2015, the drafting work on the book Chronicle of Poverty
Alleviation in Guizhou officially started.
Wu Dahua, Deputy Director of the Drafting Committee of the book
and Director-General of the Guizhou Provincial Academy of Social
Sciences, said that the purpose of producing this book is to
comprehensively and objectively record the journey and achievements
of the Guizhou Province in large-scale poverty alleviation under the
support and guidance of the CPC Central Committee and the State
Council. At the 30th anniversary of China’s launch of a nationwide,
planned, large-scale rural poverty alleviation campaign, and at the
beginning of the the 13th Five-Year Plan period, the book serves not
only as a record, but also as a reference for policy-making by the CPC
committees and governments and for the further advancement of
poverty alleviation in Guizhou.
The drafting of the Chronicle of Poverty Alleviation in Guizhou is
jointly carried out by the Guizhou Provincial Local History Office, the
Provincial Poverty Alleviation Office and the Provincial Academy of
Social Sciences. In carrying out poverty alleviation, Guizhou province
emphasized problem-orientation and practical significance, studied and
extracted good experience and practices, organized dedicated research
on Big Poverty Alleviation, and endeavored to conduct social science
studies on precise poverty alleviation.
Knowledge is the foundation of actions, which in turn complement
knowledge. The publicity and social sciences authorities in Guizhou
Province actively leveraged their intellectual strengths to organize “an
army of 100,000 social science researchers” coming from social science
federations, associations, societies, research communities and
universities. They provided intellectual support for precise policy-
making and for poverty alleviation in general through activities such as
organizing research on precise poverty alleviation, lectures by publicity
officials to spread courage and wisdom, and introducing social science
theories to the grass roots in support of poverty alleviation.
For every year between 2016 and the end of 2020, the social science
system in Guizhou Province will organize an annual academic
conference on poverty alleviation to formulate a number of research
outcomes that will facilitate poverty alleviation and development; an
annual social science popularization campaign for poverty alleviation
to enhance the social science knowledge of the masses and to spread an
optimistic outlook on poverty alleviation and achieving moderate
prosperity; an annual academic salon on poverty alleviation that
contributes advice and policy suggestions to the CPC committees and
governments of poor areas; a yearly research project on poverty
alleviation so as to create a social science theoretical framework that
can offer intellectual support for poverty alleviation in the province; a
yearly paired poverty alleviation campaign that connect the 100,000
researchers with poor households; an annual third party evaluation of
the impact of poverty alleviation strategies of the Guizhou CPC
Provincial Committee on the ground; a yearly collection of success
stories so as to stimulate the internal drive of the poor people to escape
poverty with vivid examples; a yearly discovery of traditional cultural
heritage so as to provide cultural support for the inheritance and
commercialization of traditional cultural heritage; a yearly promotion
of rural cultural heritage to ensure that the rural culture of Guizhou can
be preserved and passed on; and a yearly promotion of villages for
cultural tourism, providing intellectual support for counties and
regions with the ripe conditions.

Paired Poverty Assistance Injects Development

Vitality
In the past, Zhengan County was an important commercial center in the
north of Guizhou with Chongqing to the south, and therefore was
named the gateway of the north of Guizhou. Later on, due to decrepit
infrastructure such as transport, it became one of the poor counties in
the province.
In 2015, the Publicity Department of the CPC Guizhou Provincial
Committee was paired with Zhengan County to help lift it out of
poverty. The Publicity Department adopted a parallel approach
emphasizing both practical projects and publicity. It coordinated 39
paired assistance projects, worth around 1.4 billion yuan, implemented
10 categories of paired assistance projects, secured paired assistance
funding of 12 million yuan, guided and assisted Zhengan to improve
publicity work, and effectively advanced the project of posting officials
to villages to bring about moderate prosperity.
In the “Shenzhen Cultural Exhibition: Investment and Business
Solicitation Meeting of the Cultural Industry in Guizhou”, the Mingge
Musical Instrument Manufacturing Project of Zhengan County, as one of
the 18 selected projects promoted by Guizhou, officially signed a
contract worth 100 million yuan. In the process of work, the Publicity
Department of the CPC Guizhou Provincial Committee actively guided
Zhengan county to file an application to get its guitar industrial park
designated as a provincial-level industrial demonstration base,
committed 1 million yuan for the planning of the industrial park,
incorporated the industrial park into the Provincial 13th Five-Year Plan,
and supported Zhengan to build a cultural industry park based on
guitar manufacturing.
While promoting the implementation of physical projects, the
Publicity Department of the CPC Guizhou Provincial Committee also
committed great efforts to strengthen ideological and cultural publicity.
It managed to secure a dedicated funding of 11.5 million yuan for the
ideological and cultural publicity in Zhengan County and provided
preferential policies for that matter. It supported the designation of
three demonstrations of “rich, educated, happy and beautiful rural
households and charming countryside”, the building of 8 rural youth
cultural schools, 14 rural cultural centers. It has achieved full coverage
of rural youth cultural schools in the county and will achieve full
coverage of rural cultural centers in three years’ time.
Zhengan County plans to lift 36,000 people out of poverty in 2016
and eliminate poverty in 2017.
Winning the war on poverty with heart, mind and sweat. Publicity
authorities throughout the province, leveraging their functions and
considering local realities, endeavored to strengthen paired poverty
alleviation assistance, to accumulate and spread the positive energy to
achieve moderate prosperity, and to enhance the confidence of the
grass root officials and masses in achieving leapfrog development and
moderate prosperity.
Form a strong “attack team” in the war against poverty. Officials
posted to villages and first secretaries, with love and a sense of
responsibility, endeavored with great pragmatism and visited residents
door-to-door to listen to their voice. They left cities and took deep roots
in the countryside, formed a harmonious relationship with the people
like that between water and fish, and became trusted helpers to the
people. They launched a campaign to “bring the voice of the party to
every household”, utilized community gatherings, farm work breaks,
night lectures to introduce policies, offer skill trainings and promote
rule of law, and thus created a virtuous environment where every one is
lecturer and everywhere is classroom. By the sweat of their brows, they
improved rural infrastructure, enhanced people’s living conditions, and
increased the people’s level of happiness.
Clearly identify the target of paired poverty alleviation. The
publicity authorities throughout the province chose the targets of their
paired poverty alleviation, designed practical assistance measures,
launched the campaign of “one-on-one poverty alleviation”, with one
party branch (sections, departments or academic societies) assisting
one poor village and one party official assisting one poor household,
clarified the responsibilities of each stakeholder, and provided
pragmatic and down-to-earth assistance that consolidates the
foundation for growth. They also provided financing support and
helped organize infrastructure construction, promote industrial
development, and offer skills training. They actively solicited projects,
promoted interested ones to implement their projects, and helped built
information platforms such as e-commerce platforms. Since 2016,
Resident Working Group for Moderate Prosperity in Zhengan County of
the Publicity Department of the CPC Guizhou Provincial Committee
again solicited many projects to be implemented in Zhengan County,
such as the Hexi Connection of Daoan Expressway project, Town and
Township Landfill project, Extensive Treatment of Rural Environment
project, Establishment of Level-3 General Hospital project,
Establishment of Learning Venues for Provincial-Level Intangible
Cultural Heritage project, and Relocation of 3,000 Households for
Ecological Reasons project.
The journey ahead is still long and tortuous, but we will negotiate
the obstacles and move forward.
Poverty alleviation through liberal arts is moving in lockstep with
the war on poverty and is always on the side of the poor. The publicity
authorities throughout the province are on a journey to achieve poverty
alleviation and moderate prosperity with strong conviction and
determined steps.
© People's Publishing House 2021
Guiyang Poverty Alleviation Office, China’s Solution for Precise Poverty Alleviation
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-7431-3_4

Qiannan Prefecture: Succeed in Poverty

Alleviation and Enable the People to
Feel the Improvement
Guiyang Poverty Alleviation OfficeGuiyang Poverty Alleviation Office1
(1) Guiyang Poverty Alleviation Office, Beijing, China

The Buyi and Miao Autonomous Prefecture of Qianan is located at the

mid-south of Guizhou Province, abutting Qiandongnan Prefecture to the
east, Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region to the south, Anshun City
and Qianxinan Prefecture to the west, and the provincial capital of
Guiyang to the north. Qiannan Prefecture is a region with multi-ethnic
settlement. The whole prefecture consists of 12 counties and covers an
area of 26,197 km2, with the settlement of 37 ethnic groups such as
Han, Buyi, Miao, Shui, Zhuang, Dong, Maonan, Gelao ethnic groups.
Qiannan prefecture has taken a long-term view, sought to tackle the
difficult issues of weak infrastructure, industries, and ecology in poor
areas, shouldered the main responsibilities of poverty alleviation,
increased investment in poverty alleviation, strengthened the
implementation of plans, and endeavored to address the root causes
that limit the development of the prefecture in a staged and well-paced
fashion.
The cause of poverty alleviation has entered into a critical phase
with the most intractable issues lying ahead. General Secretary Xi
Jinping emphasized that “a moderately prosperous society in all
respects means that no ethnic group is left behind and no one is left
behind”. The Buyi and Miao Autonomous Prefecture of Qianan is located
within a large area of serious rocky desertification cutting across
Yunnan, Guangxi and Guizhou Province. It has 592,400 people living
below the poverty line, accounting for 16.66% of the total population. It
is a prefecture with serious and widespread poverty and is therefore a
main battleground of Guizhou’s war on poverty.
It is the essential requirement of socialism and an important
obligation of the Party to eradicate poverty, improve the people’s
livelihood and achieve common prosperity. In recent years, Qiannan
Prefecture has exerted high pressure on itself to tackle difficulties;
upheld the spirit of long-term vision, pursuit of excellence and being a
first mover that supported its large-scale radio telescope project; cast
its eyes on the long haul to remove the road blocks of weak
infrastructure, industries and ecology; actively shouldered the main
responsibility for poverty alleviation; increased investment in poverty
alleviation; strengthened the implementation of plans; endeavored to
address the root causes that limit the development of the prefecture in
a staged and well-paced fashion; set the goal of lifting everyone out of
poverty by 2018 and ensuring that people do not slip back into poverty
during 2019 and 2020; comprehensively consolidated and
strengthened the outcomes of poverty alleviation and development;
and vowed to decisively win the war on poverty, a war it can’t afford to
lose.
Strengthen leadership, ensure accountability and see to
implementation in an ironclad fashion. Winning the war on poverty is
not only a major political responsibility, but also the most important
project to improve the people’s wellbeing. Qiannan Prefecture has
always been very forceful in strategic planning, obligation fulfillment
and task implementation to ensure that all tasks are done and dusted.
The following system is strictly enforced: the leaders of CPC
committees and governments at prefectural, county, and township
levels are at the same time the leaders of poverty alleviation leading
groups. Mission statements are made at every level, and responsibilities
are traced to the last person. If the poor area remains poor, the leaders
of this area can not be promoted, if a village remains poor, the working
teams dispatched to the village have to stay too, if a poor household
remains poor, the official paired to this household has to keep working.
Arrangements are made every 10 days, supervision is conducted every
month and an assessment is carried out every 6 months. There is a
relentless focus on outcome and a strict system of rewards and
punishments.
Encourage relocation to achieve sustained development. The
prefecture holds relocation as the most effective and most lasting
poverty alleviation measure.
First, the households for relocation is chosen with four principles to
ensure targeted relocation. Households living on land that is too barren
to feed them are the priority for relocation; villages with less than 50
households and a poverty rate of over 50% are moved elsewhere;
villages in ecologically vulnerable areas or with high potential for
natural disasters are relocated in a coordinated fashion; and villages
with active and urgent demands for relocation are considered priority.
Second, relocation ought to be job-oriented, clustered and precise.
The relocation location should be decided by geographical advantages,
relocation type be decided by resource endowment, and relocated scale
by decided by the number of available jobs. The priority areas for
relocation are counties and industrial parks. Relocated households
should be encouraged to move from the primary to secondary and
tertiary industries.
Third, four mechanisms are promoted to support long-term
development. With the purpose of improving the living conditions and
work environment of the poor people, focusing on the capability of
sustained development of relocated households, prioritizing the
profitable operation of contracted land, forest land and rural land for
construction, coordinating employment, education and health care,
connecting low income subsidies, medical care and pension between
the old and the new locations, building business venues, farms and
public service facilities, the prefecture ensures that the people are able
to relocate, can survive in their adopted homes, and can develop and
prosper there.
Fourth, implement the responsibilities to ensure the development of
relocated households. For every relocated household, the prefecture is
responsible for their settlement, for providing them with services, for
their employment and for poverty alleviation. Such measures ensure
that the considerate policies of the CPC Central Committees are put in
place.
Another random document with
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others. It is possible that, before the coming of the white man, the
number of these winter outer-sea birds in the Cape Cod region
exceeded that of the summer birds, but now, alas! the shotgun and
the killer had their fun, the winter peoples have been wasted away,
and some even exterminated. To-day, the summer birds outnumber
their winter kin.
A new danger, moreover, now threatens the birds at sea. An
irreducible residue of crude oil, called by refiners “slop,” remains in
stills after oil distillation, and this is pumped into southbound tankers
and emptied far offshore. This wretched pollution floats over large
areas, and the birds alight in it and get it on their feathers. They
inevitably die. Just how they perish is still something of a question.
Some die of cold, for the gluey oil so mats and swabs the thick arctic
feathering that creases open through it to the skin above the vitals;
others die of hunger as well. Captain George Nickerson of Nauset
tells me that he saw an oil-covered eider trying to dive for food off
Monomoy, and that the bird was unable to plunge. I am glad to be
able to write that the situation is better than it was. Five years ago,
the shores of Monomoy peninsula were strewn with hundreds, even
thousands, of dead sea fowl, for the tankers pumped out slop as
they were passing the shoals—into the very waters, indeed, on
which the birds have lived since time began! To-day oil is more the
chance fate of the unfortunate individual. But let us hope that all
such pollution will presently end.
My beach is empty, but not the ocean beyond. Between the coast
guard station and Nauset Light, a “raft” of skunk coots is spending
the winter. Patches of white on the forehead and the hind neck of the
glossy black head of the male are responsible for this local name.
The birds sit in the ocean, just seaward of the surf—the coast
guardsmen say there is a shallow close by and shellfish—and the
whole raft rises and falls unconcernedly as the swells roll under it.
Sometimes a bird will dive through the oncoming ridge of a breaker
and emerge casually on the other side; sometimes a bird will stand
up in the water, flap its wings, and settle down again unconcernedly.
There are perhaps thirty birds in this flock. In Thoreau’s time, these
rafts of coots formed a flock which was practically continuous the
whole length of the outer Cape, but to-day such rafts, though not at
all rare, are but occasional.
Standing at the door of my house, I watch these winter birds pass
and repass, flying well offshore. Now a company of a hundred or
more old squaws pass, now a tribe of one of the scoter folk; now a
pair of eiders come to rest in the ocean directly in front of the
Fo’castle.
These birds practically never come ashore during the winter. They
eat, sleep, live, and meet together at sea. When you see a sea duck
on the beach, you can be sure something is the matter with him, so
runs a saying of the Cape which I had from Captain Nickerson. The
only way in which I can observe these winter folk is by using a good
glass or by catching a specimen who has got into some kind of
trouble and taken refuge on the beach. All these creatures are at a
great disadvantage when ashore, and have a world of difficulty trying
to launch themselves into the air; they make unwieldy jump after
jump, the auks being practically unable to rise at all upon their wings.
It was thrilling to walk the beach, and catch sight of a bird sitting
solitary on the sands. What might it be? What had led it ashore?
Could I possibly catch it and give it a careful looking over? The
keynote of my strategy lay in the attempt to prevent the birds from
getting back into the water, so between them and the surf I would
rush—for the birds would begin to move down the slope to the surf
the instant they saw or heard or felt me—and I soon learned that a
brisk countercharge was worth all the ruse and the patient stalking in
the world. Then began a furious game of tag, the alarmed bird
skittering all over the beach, being gradually driven by me toward the
dunes, till I manœuvred him into the angle between the beach and
the sandy wall.
My first prisoners were three unhappy little auks, Alle alle, who
had dipped themselves in oil somewhere on their way down from the
arctic—odd little browny-black and white birds about the size of a
pigeon, who stood up on queer little auk feet, faced me, and beat
little bent wings with a penguin look to them; indeed, the bird has
much of an Adelie penguin air. On the Cape, these auks are known
as “pine knots”—a term said to be derived from the creature’s tough
compactness—or as “dovekies.” They have always been “aukies” to
me. At the Fo’castle I gave them a generous corner floored with
newspaper and walled in with boards and a chair. I tried to clean off
what I could of the oil; I gave them what I could find of sea victuals,
but all in vain; they would not eat, and I let them go just as soon as I
saw that I could not possibly help them and that Nature had best
deal with the problem in her own way.

Razor-billed Auk
When they stood up almost perpendicularly and tried to walk about
on their little legs set far aft—they are pygopodes—it was much as if
an acrobat, standing on his head, were trying to patter about, using
the length between his elbow and his finger tips as feet. These little
birds used both wings and feet when trying to escape me on the
beach. They ran and rowed the sand with their wings; the verb gives
the precise motion. Moreover, what had taken place was beautifully
marked upon the tabula rasa of the sand—little webbed feet running
in a close chain, wing tips nicking the sand once in each stroke.
Coming south from their distant arctic, these little auks do not fly
above the ocean as do the more advanced birds; they “skitter” along
just over the surface of the waves and keep well out to sea, even
well out of sight of land.
One aukie I caught at night. I was on the beach walking north to
meet the man coming south from Nauset, and, as I flashed my
searchlight to see who the surfman might be, I saw an aukie coming
toward me, fluttering along the very edge of surf, all sticky and a-
glisten with fuel oil. Strange little fragment of life on the edge of that
mysterious immensity! I picked him up; he struggled and then kept
still, and I carried him back to the Fo’castle. The bird was small
enough to be carried in one hand, and as I held him, his duck feet
rested on my palm and his head and neck emerged from the fork
between my thumb and index finger. At the Fo’castle he opened his
beak, “chattered” with it (there is no word for that motion without
sound), transformed his short neck into a surprisingly long one, and
looked at me with a kind of “all is well but anything may be expected”
expression in his eyes. Every now and then he rather solemnly
winked, showing the delicate tan-coloured feathering on his lid. I put
him in a corner by himself, and when I went to bed he had given up
trying to pick himself free of the oil with his pointed, sparrowy bill,
and was standing in his corner of shadow, facing the angle of the
walls, for all the world like a small boy who has been naughty at
school. The next morning I let him go at his own insistent request.
I found a razor-billed auk, Alca torda, cornered him, looked him
over while he threatened me with a bill held open and motionless,
and then left him to his own devices. I did the same with a Brünnich’s
murre, and I might have had an eider, too, had I wanted one, for
Alvin Newcomb, surfman No. 1 at Nauset, captured a male one night
while on north patrol. The eider, however, is a huge bird, and I was
not quite prepared to turn the Fo’castle into a kind of ocean hen
yard. So the eider at Nauset, after having most unconcernedly
listened to the station radio for a little while, was returned that same
evening to the North Atlantic. I had one chance at a rare bird. On the
first day of the great northeast storm, as I was wandering about at
noontime through the sleet, I found in the mouth of a cut the body of
a murre. The bird had been dead but a short time, for it was still limp
when I picked it up, and as I held it I could even feel a faint vanishing
warmth in its exhausted flesh. This bird was the rarer murre, Uria
troile troile, he of the sharper beak whom men have almost erased
from the list of living things. It had apparently died of being caught
and battered about for long hours by the gale. After the storm, I tried
to find the creature again, but the tide and the storm had poured
through the cut and swept everything before them into a confusion of
sand and ruin.
These ocean peoples live on such little fish as they can seize; they
pick up shellfish on shallow areas; they eat certain marine growths.
Some have a taste for the local mussel, Mytilus edulis. Unless the
winter is an exceptionally severe one, the birds seem to fare well
enough. Many stay late, and May is usually at hand before the long
lines of scoters fly north again under the command of their feathered
admirals. Such is the history of the migrant seafarers of the Cape. A
word remains to be said about the residents and the migrants in the
marsh.

II
About the middle of December, I began to see that an amusing
game of cross purposes was being played by the sea birds and the
land birds of the region west of the dunes. Food becoming scarce
upon the uplands, crows, bobwhites, and starlings began to take an
interest in the sea and the salt meadows, while gulls took to
exploring the moors and to sitting in the top branches of inland pines.
One wise old gull once discovered that there was good fare to be
had in Mr. Joe Cobb’s chicken yard just off the western rim of the
great marsh, and every morning this sagacious creature would
separate himself from the thousands milling about over the cold tides
and flutter down among the hens. There he would forage about,
picking up grain like a barnyard fowl till he had dulled the edge of his
hunger. I doubt if gulls ever do more. After visiting the chicken yard
regularly for several winters, the bird disappeared one spring and
was never seen again. He had probably lived out the span of his
days.
I pause here to wonder at how little we know of the life span of
wild animals. Only cases of exceptionally long life or short life seem
to attract the attention of man. I can open any good bird book and
find a most careful, a most detailed study of the physical selves and
habits of birds, but of their probable length of life, never a word. Such
material would be exceedingly difficult to secure, and perhaps the
suggestion is folly, but there are times when one wishes that this
neglected side of animal existence might have more attention.
During the summer, I never saw starlings on the marsh, but now
that winter is here they leave the uplands by the coast guard station,
and venture out along the dunes. These flights of exploration are
very rare. I have seen the birds flying over the salt meadows, I have
seen them light on the ridgepole of a gunning camp, but I have never
once encountered them on the outer beach. With crows, it is a
different story. The birds will investigate anything promising, and
during the summer I found crows on the beach on four or five
different occasions, these visits being made, for the most part, early
in the morning.
Chancing to look toward the marsh one warm October afternoon, I
witnessed a battle between two gulls and a young crow for the
possession of some marine titbit the crow had picked up on the flats;
it was a picturesque contest, for the great silvery wings of the gulls
beat down and inclosed the crow till he resembled a junior demon in
some old lithograph of the war in heaven. Eventually one of the gulls
seized on the coveted morsel, flew off a bit, and gulped it down,
leaving the crow and the other gull to “consider” like the cow in the
old song. Winter and necessity now make the crow something of a
beach comber. The birds cross over to the beach at low tide on mild
days, forage about warily, and return to their uplands the instant they
no longer have the beach all to themselves. A flight of gulls will send
them cawing home, their great sombre wings beating the ocean air.
Even on this immense and lonely beach, they remain the wariest of
creatures, and if I wish to see what they are up to, I have to use ten
times the care in stalking them that I would have to use in stalking
any casual sea bird. I have to creep through cuts and valleys in the
dunes and worm my way over cold sand that drinks the warmth and
life out of the flesh. I usually find them picking at a fish flung out of
the breakers perhaps a day or two before—picking industriously and
solemnly.
Once in a while, a covey of shore larks will cross the dunes and
alight on the beach in the lee and the afternoon shadow of the sand
bank. They fly very low, the whole group rising and falling with the
rise and fall of the hills and hollows, a habit that gives their flights a
picturesque and amusing roller-coaster quality. Once having settled
down on the outer side of the dunes, the birds keep well up on the
beach and never seem to venture close to ocean.
This same shore lark, Otocoris alpestris, is perhaps the bird I
encounter most frequently during the winter months. This season
they are here by the thousand; indeed, they are so thick that I scarce
can walk behind the dunes without putting up a flock of these alert,
brownish, fugitive creatures. Their kingdom lies to the west of the
dunes, in the salt-hay fields and intermingled marsh areas which
extend between the dunes and the creek running more or less
parallel to the sand bar. Coming from Greenland and Labrador, these
birds reach the Eastham meadows in October and November, and
all winter long they forage and run about in the dead bristles of the
hay. Their only note here is a rather sad little “tseep, tseep,” which
they utter as they skim the grass in alarm, but it is said that they
have an interesting song during their breeding season in springtime
Labrador.
 Brünnich’s Murres at Nest in
the Summer North
It is early on a pleasant winter afternoon, and I am returning to the
Fo’castle through the meadows, my staff in my hand and a load of
groceries in a knapsack on my back. The preceding day brought
snow flurries to us out of the northwest, and there are patches of
snow on the hay fields and the marshes, and, on the dunes, nests of
snow held up off the ground by wiry spears of beach grass bent over
and tangled into a cup. Such little pictures as this last are often to be
seen on the winter dunes; I pause to enjoy them, for they have the
quality and delicacy of Japanese painting. There is a blueness in the
air, a blue coldness on the moors, and across the sky to the south, a
pale streamer of cloud smoking from its upper edge. Every now and
then, I see ahead of me a round, blackish spot in the thin snow;
these are the cast-off shells of horseshoe crabs, from whose thin
tegument the snow has melted. A flock of nervous shore larks,
hidden under an old mowing machine, emerge running, take to their
wings, and, flying south a fifty yards, suddenly drop and disappear
into the grass. Hesitating on the half-alert, a little flock of bobwhites,
occasional invaders of this stubble, watch me pass, and then
continue feeding. To the west, from the marsh, I hear the various
cries of gulls, the mewing note, the call, and that queer sound which
is almost a guttural bark. Afternoon shadows are gathering in the
cuts of the dunes, blue shadows and cold, and there is a fine sea
tang in the air.
It is low tide, and the herring gulls, Larus argentatus, are feeding
on the flats and gravel banks. As I watch them through a glass, they
seem as untroubled as fowls on an inland farm. Their talkative
groups and gatherings have a domestic look. The gull population of
the Cape is really one people, for, though separate gull
congregations live in various bays and marshes, the mass of the
birds seem to hear of any new food supply and flock as one to the
feast. So accustomed to man have they grown, and so fearless, that
they will follow in his very footsteps for a chance to scavenge food; I
have seen the great birds walking round clammers who threw broken
clams to them as they might throw scraps of meat to kittens. In
hungry seasons the clammer may hear a flapping just behind and
discover that a gull has just made off with a clam from his pail. They
follow the eelers, too, and on the ice of the Eastham salt pond you
may chance to see a pair of gulls disputing an eel which the eelers
have thrown away; one will have it by the tail, the other by the head,
and both tug with insistence and increasing bad temper. The victory
in this primitive battle goes either to the strongest gull or to the
fastest swallower.
An unhurried observation of the marsh, especially a study of its
lesser creeks and concealed pools, reveals hundreds of ducks. To
identify and classify these birds is a next to impossible task, for they
are very suspicious and have chosen their winter quarters with a
sound instinct for defensive strategy. The great majority of these
birds are undoubtedly black duck, Anas rubripes, the most wary and
suspicious of all wintering birds. All day long, back and forth over the
dunes between the marsh and the ocean, these ducks are ever
flying; by twos and threes and little flocks they go, and those who go
out to sea fly so far out that the eye loses them in the vastness of
ocean. I like to walk in the marsh early in the evening, keeping out as
far as I can toward the creeks. The ducks hear me and begin a
questioning quacking. I hear them talk and take alarm; other ducks,
far off, take up the alerte; sometimes wings whistle by in the
darkness. The sound of a pair of “whistler” ducks on the wing is a
lovely, mysterious sound at such a time. It is a sound made with
wings, a clear, sibilant note which increases as the birds draw near,
and dies away in the distance like a faint and whistling sigh.
One March evening, just as sundown was fading into night, the
whole sky chanced to be overspread with cloud, all save a golden
channel in the west between the cloud floor and the earth. It was
very still, very peaceful on my solitary dune. The whole earth was
dark, dark as a shallow cup lifted to a solemnity of silence and cloud.
I heard a familiar sound. Turning toward the marsh, I saw a flock of
geese flying over the meadows along the rift of dying, golden light,
their great wings beating with a slow and solemn beauty, their
musical, bell-like cry filling the lonely levels and the dark. Is there a
nobler wild clamour in all the world? I listened to the sound till it died
away and the birds had disappeared into darkness, and then heard a
quiet sea chiding a little at the turn of tide. Presently, I began to feel
a little cold, and returned to the Fo’castle, and threw some fresh
wood on the fire.
 Chapter VI
LANTERNS ON THE BEACH

I
It is now the middle of March, cold winds stream between earth
and the serene assurance of the sun, winter retreats, and for a little
season the whole vast world here seems as empty as a shell. Winter
is no mere negation, no mere absence of summer; it is another and
a positive presence, and between its ebbing and the slow, cautious
inflow of our northern spring there is a phase of earth emptiness, half
real, perhaps, and half subjective. A day of rain, another bright week,
and all earth will be filled with the tremor and the thrust of the year’s
new energies.
There has just been a great wreck, the fifth this winter and the
worst. On Monday morning last, shortly after five o’clock, the big
three-masted schooner Montclair stranded at Orleans and went to
pieces in an hour, drowning five of her crew.
It had blown hard all Sunday night, building up enormous seas.
Monday’s dawn, however, was not stormy, only wintry and grey. The
Montclair, on her way from Halifax to New York, had had a hard
passage, and sunrise found her off Orleans with her rigging iced up
and her crew dog-weary. Helpless and unmanageable, she swung
inshore and presently struck far out and began to break up. Lifted,
rocked, and pounded by the morning’s mountainous seas, her masts
were seen to quiver at each crash, and presently her foremast and
her mainmast worked free, and, scissoring grotesquely back and
forth across each other, split the forward two thirds of the vessel
lengthwise—“levered the ship open,” as Russell Taylor of Nauset
said. The vessel burst, the two forward masses of the ship drifted
inshore and apart, a cargo of new laths poured into the seas from
the broken belly of the hold. Seven men clung to the rocking, drifting
mass that was once the stern.
It was a singular fragment, for the vessel had broken as neatly
crosswise as it had lengthwise, and the seas were washing in below
deck as into an open barrel. Dragging over the shoal ground, the
mass rocked on its keel, now rolling the men sickeningly high, now
tumbling them down into the trampling rush of the seas. The fall of
the two forward masts had snapped off the mizzen some twenty-five
feet above the deck, and from the stump cracked-out slivers swung
free with the rolling. Bruised, wet through, and chilled to the bone,
the unfortunate men dared not lash themselves down, for they had to
be free to climb the tilted deck when the ship careened.
Five clung to the skylight of the after deckhouse, two to the stern-
rail balustrade. Laths filled the sea, poured over the men, and
formed a jagged and fantastic wall along the beach.
One great sea drowned all the five. Men on the beach saw it
coming and shouted, the men on the deckhouse shouted and were
heard, and then the wave broke, hiding the tragic fragment in a
sluice of foam and wreckage. When this had poured away, the men
on the afterhouse were gone. A head was visible for a minute, and
then another drifting southward, and then there was nothing but sea.
Two men still clung to the balustrade, one a seventeen-year-old
boy, the other a stocky, husky-built sailor. The wave tore the boy
from the balustrade, but the stocky man reached out, caught him,
and held on. The tide rising, the stern began to approach the beach.
A detail of men hurriedly sent over from Nauset Station now
appeared on the beach and managed to reach and rescue the
survivors. The Montclair had chanced to strand near a station
classed as “inactive”—coast guard stations are discontinued if there
is not enough work to justify their maintenance—and the two or three
men who garrisoned the station could do little but summon instant
aid. Men came from Nauset, circling the Eastham lagoon and
Orleans cove in local automobiles, but the whole primitive tragedy
was over in a moment of time.
 The Wreck of the Montclair.
Early Afternoon
As the vessel was breaking up, men came to the beach and
helped themselves to the laths and what wreckage they fancied.
Later on, there was a kind of an auction of the salvaged material.
The other day I saw half-a-dozen bundles of the Montclair’s laths
piled up near a barn.
A week after the wreck, a man walking the Orleans shore came to
a lonely place, and there he saw ahead of him a hand thrust up out
of the great sands. Beneath he found the buried body of one of the
Montclair’s crew.
I can see the broken mast of the schooner from the deck of the
Fo’castle. Sunday last, I walked over to the ship. The space under
the after deckhouse from which the men were swept—officers’
quarters, I imagine—is an indescribable flung mass of laths, torn
wood, wrecked panelling, sopped blankets, and sailor’s clothing. I
remember the poor, stringy, cheap ties. In the midst of the débris a
stain of soppy pink paper caught my eye: it was a booklet, “If You
Were Born in February.” I have often seen the set of twelve on
newsstands. The scarlet cover of this copy had seeped into the
musty pages. “Those who are born in this month,” I read, “have a
particular affection for home”; and again, “They will go through fire
and water for their loved ones.”
Who brought this thing aboard? one wonders. Whose curious
hands first opened it in the lamplight of this tragic and disordered
space? The seventeen-year-old boy is dead of the shock and
exposure; the stocky, husky-built man, the only survivor, is going on
with the sea. “He says it’s all he knows,” said a coast guardsman.
The wreck lies on the edge of the surf and trembles when the
incoming seas strike its counter and burst there with a great
upflinging of heavy spray.

II
To understand this great outer beach, to appreciate its
atmosphere, its “feel,” one must have a sense of it as the scene of
wreck and elemental drama. Tales and legends of the great disasters
fill no inconsiderable niche in the Cape mind. Older folk will tell you
of the Jason, of how she struck near Pamet in a gale of winter rain,
and of how the breakers flung the solitary survivor on the midnight
beach; others will tell of the tragic Castagna and the frozen men who
were taken off while the snow flurries obscured the February sun. Go
about in the cottages, and you may sit in a chair taken from one
great wreck and at a table taken from another; the cat purring at your
feet may be himself a rescued mariner. When the coast guards
returned to the Castagna on the quiet morning after the wreck, they
found a grey cat calmly waiting for them in the dead captain’s cabin,
and a chilled canary hunched up upon his perch. The bird died of the
bitter cold while being taken ashore in a lifeboat, “just fell off,” but the
cat left a dynasty to carry on his name.
Cape Codders have often been humorously reproached for their
attitude toward wrecks. On this coast, as on every other in the old
isolated days, a wreck was treasure trove, a free gift of the sea; even
to-day, the usable parts of a wreck are liable to melt away in a
curious manner. There is no real looting; in fact, public opinion on the
Cape is decidedly against such a practice, for it offends the local
sense of decency. The gathering of the Montclair’s laths during the
wreck really upset many people. They did not like it here. When men
are lost on the beach, the whole Cape takes it very much to heart,
talks about it, mulls over it; when men are saved, there is no place
where they are treated with greater hospitality and kindness. Cape
folks have never been wreckers in the European sense of that dark
word. Their first thought has always been of the shipwrecked men.
Forty years ago, a winter nor’easter flung the schooner J. H. Eells
on the outer bar of Eastham. Water-logged, leaking, and weighted
down with a cargo of railroad iron, the ship remained on the outer
bar, snow flurries hiding her now and then through the furious winter
day. So swift and powerful were the alongshore currents that a
surfboat could not approach the ship, and so far offshore had she
stranded that the life-saving gun would not carry. All Eastham was
on the beach, the women as well as the boys and men, and all day
long villagers and surfmen fought to reach the vessel. They were
powerless, however, and when darkness and continuing snow
closed the winter day, they had to watch the Eells fading away in the
squalls, her dying men still clinging to the shrouds.
To give these men heart, to let them know themselves
remembered, the villagers that night built great fires of driftwood on
the beach. Men and women shook the thin snow and sand from
ancient wreckage and tossed it on a wind-crazed heap of flame. All
night long they fed these pyres. With the slow return of day, it was
seen that two of the men had already died and fallen overboard. At
ten o’clock that morning, the storm having somewhat abated, the
survivors were pluckily taken off by a lone tug which approached the
wreck from seaward. Every once in a while, the rusty, shell-fouled
iron uncovers, and above it, the yellow-green waters of the outer bar
turn blue-black in a strike of summer sun.
Eighteenth Century pirates, stately British merchantmen of the
mid-Victorian years, whaling brigs, Salem East India traders,
Gloucester fishermen, and a whole host of forgotten Nineteenth
Century schooners—all these have strewn this beach with broken
spars and dead. Why this history of wreck and storm? Because the
outer Cape stands a full thirty miles out in the North Atlantic, and
because its shelterless eastern beaches flank the New Englander’s
ocean lanes for fifty miles. When a real nor’easter blows, howling
landward through the winter night over a thousand miles of grey,
tormented seas, all shipping off the Cape must pass the Cape or
strand. In the darkness and scream of the storm, in the beat of the
endless, icy, crystalline snow, rigging freezes, sails freeze and tear—
of a sudden the long booming undertone of the surf sounds under
the lee bow—a moment’s drift, the feel of surf twisting the keel of the
vessel, then a jarring, thundering crash and the upward drive of the
bar.
Stranded vessels soon begin to break up. Wrecks drag and pound
on the shoals, the waves thunder in-board, decks splinter and crack
like wooden glass, timbers part, and iron rods bend over like candles
in a heat.
Ships may strand here in dull weather and fog. The coast guards
then work at full speed to get them off before a surf rises; a coast
guard cutter comes to aid.
A few mornings ago, when I walked the beach to Nauset Station, I
followed close along the dune wall to see the wreckage uncovered
since the storm. North of the Fo’castle, along a broken mile, the new
seaward cliff of the dunes stands at least twenty feet west of the
former rim, and all the old wreckage once buried up in the region
washed away is now lying on the beach or tumbling out of the wall.
Being young, the twelve-foot cliff is still sheer, and the wreckage lies
solidly packed in its side like fruits in a sliced pudding. In one place,
some ten feet of a schooner’s mast is jutting from the wall like a
cannon from a fortress; in another, the sand is crumbling away from
the fragments of a ship’s boat, in another appears the speckled and
musty yellow corner of a door. Root tendrils of beach grass, whitish
and fine-spun as open nerves, have grown in the crumbled and
sand-eroded crevices.
Some of this wreckage is centuries old. High course tides carry
débris up the beach, sand and the dunes move down to claim it;
presently beach grass is growing tall in sand wedged between a
ship’s splintered ribs and its buried keel. A few laths from the
Montclair are whitening on the beach.
Two miles down the beach, its tiny flag streaming seaward in the
endless wind, stands Nauset Station, chimneys, weathered roof, and
cupola watchtower just visible above the dunes.

III
From Monomoy Point to Race Point in Provincetown—full fifty
miles—twelve coast guard stations watch the beach and the
shipping night and day. There are no breaks save natural ones in
this keep of the frontier.
Between the stations, at some midway and convenient point,
stand huts called halfway houses, and stations, huts, and
lighthouses are linked together by a special telephone system owned
and maintained by the coast guard services.
Every night in the year, when darkness has fallen on the Cape and
the sombre thunder of ocean is heard in the pitch pines and the
moors, lights are to be seen moving along these fifty miles of sand,
some going north, some south, twinkles and points of light solitary
and mysterious. These lights gleam from the lanterns and electric
torches of the coast guardsmen of the Cape walking the night
patrols. When the nights are full of wind and rain, loneliness and the
thunder of the sea, these lights along the surf have a quality of
romance and beauty that is Elizabethan, that is beyond all stain of
present time.
 Nauset Station
Sometimes a red flare burns on the edge of ocean, a red fireworks
flare which means wreck or danger of wreck. “You are standing in
too near to the outer bar,” says the red light to the freighter lost in a
night’s downpour of March rain. “Keep off! Keep off! Keep off!” The
signal burns and sputters, the smoke is blown away almost ere it is
born; the glassy bellies of the advancing breakers turn to volutes of
rosy black, the seething foam to a strange vermilion-pink. In the night
and rain beyond the hole of light an answering bellow sounds, ship
lights dim as the vessel changes her course, the red flare dies to a
sizzling, empty cartridge, the great dark of the beach returns to the
solitary dunes. The next day it is all entered quietly in the station log:
“Two thirty-six a.m. saw freighter standing in toward outer bar, burnt
Coston signals, freighter whistled and changed her course.”
Every night they go; every night of the year the eastern beaches
see the comings and goings of the wardens of Cape Cod. Winter
and summer they pass and repass, now through the midnight sleet
and fury of a great northeaster, now through August quiet and the
reddish-golden radiance of an old moon rising after midnight from
the sea, now through a world of rain shaken with heavy thunder and
stabbed through and through with lightning. And always, always
alone. Whenever I rise at earliest dawn, I find the beach traced and
retraced with footprints that vanish in the distances, each step a
chain forged anew each night in the courageous service of mankind.
Night patrols go between the stations and their halfway houses.
Under certain circumstances and at special times of the year, the last
patrol in the morning may end at a key post placed on some
commanding height above the beach. While on patrol, the men carry
a stock of red flare cartridges—the Coston lights—a handle to burn
them in, and a watchman’s clock which they must wind with a special
key kept at the halfway house. In summer, the beaches are covered
twice every night, in winter three times, the first patrol leaving the
station soon after dark, the second at midnight, the third an hour or
so before the dawn. The average patrol covers something like seven
miles. Only one man from each station is on the beach at any given
time, so north and south patrols alternate through the night.
Day patrols are maintained only during stormy or foggy weather.
The men then have to walk the beach night and day with not much
chance for proper rest, mile after mile of a furious winter day on the
heels of a long and almost sleepless night. The usual day watch is
kept from the towers of the stations.
A surfman who has discovered a wreck or found some sort of
trouble on the beach first burns the Coston light I have already
mentioned. This warns his station that there is something the matter,
and at the same time tells men aboard a wreck that they have been
seen and that help is coming. If the wreck lies near the station, the
guard returns with his news; if it lies near the halfway house, he
telephones. At the station, the man on station watch gives the alarm,
everybody tumbles up, and in the quickest possible time the crew
and their apparatus are on the beach hurrying through the darkness
to the wreck. Each station has now a small tractor to draw its
apparatus down the beach.
The crew of a stranded ship may be taken off either in the lifeboat
or the breeches buoy. Everything depends on the conditions of the
hour.
The life-saving cannon and its auxiliary apparatus, its powder,
lines, hawsers, and pulleys, are kept in a stout two-wheeled wagon
called “the beach cart.” The “shot,” or projectile, fired from this gun
resembles a heavy brass window weight with one end pulled out into
a stout two-foot rod ending in a loop.
When a wreck lies offshore in the surf, the end of a very light line
called the “shot line” is attached to the eyelet in the brass projectile,
and the gun aimed at the wreck with particular care. One must place
the shot where the men in the rigging can reach it, and yet avoid
striking them. If all goes well, the shot whizzes into the very teeth of
the gale and falls aboard, leaving the shot line entangled. Should the
wrecked men succeed in reaching and hauling in this first cord, a
heavier line is sent on, and when the mariners haul in this second
line, “the whip,” they haul out to their vessel the lifebuoy and its
hawser. Pulleys and cables are so rigged as to permit the buoy to be
hauled in and out to the wreck by the coast guard crew.
After everybody has been taken off, an ingenious contrivance is
hauled out to the wreck which cuts the hawser free. The crew then
gather up the apparatus, station a guard, and return.
The crew return, the little group of men in black oilers and the men
they have saved trudge off, tunnelling into the wind, the surfboat on
its wagon-cradle leading the way, the hum-rhythm of the tractor
dissolving in the gale. Ridges and piles of broken, twisted wreckage
rim the breakers’ edges, new wreckage is on its way ashore,
strewings of old weathered planking, a hatchway, sops of sailors’
clothing. A maze of footprints traces the desolate beach; the air is full
of wind-flung froth and breaker spray; the gale screams unceasing.
Just offshore, in the mile of surf, the wreck lies flat—utterly forlorn,
and helpless as a toy ship neglected by a giant’s child. The guard left
behind walks to and fro, rubs his mittened hands, and watches the
breakers cover the wreck under mountains of surf, overflow, and
sluice off in spouting masses and cascades ... breaking up.... Fishing
schooner, rigging frozen up, one of the men with both his hands
frozen ... yes, got ’em all.

IV
I call at Nauset Station several times a week, usually late in the
afternoon. Packages and mail are delivered near by, and every once