Tibet: alleviating poverty on the roof of the world

The government in the Tibet Autonomous Region has helped over 210,000 local people rise out of poverty thanks to the plan to create a well-off society that was launched following a visit by President Xi in 2013.

Local authorities had been battling the entrenched poverty in the region for many years prior to President Xi’s visit. The discussions President Xi had with local officials inspired for a new basket of policies that have had remarkable success at wiping out extreme poverty over the past six years.

In 2016, more than 2,200 poverty alleviation projects were implemented in Tibet that encouraged companies to collaborate with local farmers. In 2017, over 600 village construction projects were initiated along the impoverished borderlands.

The results of these efforts can be seen in a village called Tamar in the Lhasa region. In the past year, nearly 1,000 households have moved into apartments equipped with heating and hot water.

“People in the village can now access lots of new public infrastructure,” said Gesangzhuoma, a secretary of the local CPC party branch. “There is a primary school at the gate to the village, and a hospital in the village community.”

In another local village called Lua, villagers can now access the Internet thanks to the installation of new telecommunications infrastructure. And with the guidance of the local government, villagers have tapped into a new source of income by selling local foods and handicrafts in a nearby city.

“We’ve built some greenhouses to improve production, and we sell the vegetables in the city. In 2019, we will start distributing the income to each household in the village,” said Zhaxisangzhu, the head of Lua village.

To provide a safer living environment for people in Tibet, over a five-year period the regional government moved over 260,000 people from dangerous areas into safer housing. Li Xinnian, the deputy director of the office of poverty alleviation in Tibet, said the move “unprecedented” in terms of scale.

And in recent years, the regional government has invested 10.7 billion yuan (1.6 billion U.S. dollars) to fund efforts to protect the local environment in the region. This work has the added benefit of having created 666,700 new jobs in local industries.