In just four years, relocation efforts in Tongwei county have helped nearly 3,000 families out of poverty, Wu Xiaohui reports in Tongwei county, Gansu province.

It's 5:40 pm on a Friday afternoon in September, 11-year-old Chen Donghui and her 7-year-old brother Chen Tianqi, after walking home from school, put down their bags on the doorstep of their new home at a poverty alleviation resettlement site located in Lijiadian township, Tongwei county, Northwest China's Gansu province, and start to eat apples in the mellow sunlight.

"I worried very much about my children in the past, especially in bad weather, as they had to walk about an hour to get to school. Often, by the time they would arrive back home, it was already dark, but now it's only 10 minutes' walk," says the children's mother, 36-year-old Chen Jundi, at the family's new home.

Chen and her family used to live in a 40-square-meter adobe house up in the mountain, with poor transportation links and limited access to clean water. In comparison, her new home-two 150-square-meter floors-is fully fitted with water pipes and central heating. The living room is freshly furnished with an L-shaped sofa and a flat-screen TV.

Chen's family was among 36 poor households relocated from four nearby villages in 2019, supported by financial assistance from the local government.

"We spent 15,000 yuan ($2,196) to build this new house, while the government provided 257,300 yuan in subsidies, which made up most of the total cost," says Chen. According to local officials, the total investment of this resettlement village was about 8.4 million yuan, including the cost of building the houses and public facilities.

Since 2016, Tongwei has built 104 such resettlements to relocate 2,765 families with 13,522 people as part of its poverty alleviation efforts and at a total cost of over 800 million yuan, according to local officials.

"We fully respect the will of villagers and guide them to relocate voluntarily," says He Fei, a government official and head of a working group on the poverty alleviation resettlement project in the county. "As to those households who applied to participate in the relocation project, but do not want to move to the designated site, they can build houses at safe sites at their own convenience and enjoy the same benefits of the policy."

According to He, villagers' applications for relocation were voluntarily submitted and carefully evaluated, at village, town and county levels, with the final decision made by the county's development and reform commission.

"For some households living in the mountains, if their houses are in good condition and the transportation is relatively convenient, or they need to herd sheep, relocating might cause certain difficulties for them," explains He. "That's why we made the resettlement project voluntary.

"Our policies are always people-oriented. Resettlers can keep their farmland. If they choose to transfer the land for industrial development, in recent years, many off-farm employment opportunities have also been created near the newly built resettlements."

Chen is still farming her land, 5 kilometers from her new home. Instead of planting crops, such as corn, wheat and potato for food self-sufficiency with a low economic benefit, since last year she has been planting honeysuckle, a kind of herb introduced by a company from Yunnan province in 2013 and now planted on a large scale in Tongwei.

"Honeysuckle is much better (in terms of earnings) than potatoes," says Chen. She also works as a seasonal worker at the planting base of a honeysuckle company not far from her home, with a daily salary of 80 yuan.

Chen's family was officially lifted out of poverty last year. Her husband works at construction sites 50 kilometers from home. According to Chen, the family of six earned a combined total of around 80,000 yuan in 2019. As of 2020, China's national poverty line is set at 4,000 yuan of annual income per person, a standard that has been raised annually taking into account inflation and other factors.

In 2018, with support from the National Energy Administration, a 5.3-hectare honeysuckle planting project under panels fitted with photovoltaic cells was implemented near the resettlement where Chen's family live. The honeysuckle field was allocated to 16 relocated families for management. Each household can increase its income by 3,120 yuan per year.

Honeysuckle and the photovoltaics have become two main new industries that Tongwei has developed in recent years to lift the villagers out of poverty. In 2014, the county was designated as the "national photovoltaic poverty alleviation pilot county". The county has built 96 village-level photovoltaic power stations capable of producing 90,000 kilowatts.

Located on the Loess Plateau, due to the fragile ecological environment and frequent drought-based natural disasters, Tongwei has struggled with poverty issues. However, with industries developing and a concerted effort to solve the problem, between 2014 and 2019, a total of 26,500 impoverished households in Tongwei were lifted out of poverty.