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Zhang Yundi was pretty happy when her family moved from a mudbrick house in Wanfushan village to a new apartment building in Laoxian town in 2017, but it was not long before she started worrying about increased expenses: food, water, electricity, and other daily necessities were costing the family of six 3,000 yuan a month.
Workers produce socks at a community factory in Pingli county, northwestern China's Shaanxi province, on April 22, 2020. [Photo/Xinhua]
In December 2018, a factory opened close to Zhang's home, and she did not hesitate to apply for a job. She now works at the factory making fluffy toys, earning over 2,000 yuan a month. Combining it with her husband's 3,000 yuan a month earned at a paint factory, Zhang felt much more at ease.
Laoxian town belongs to Pingli county, previously an impoverished county in Ankang city, northwestern China's Shaanxi province. It is located in the Qinling-Bashan mountainous region, one of China's 14 contiguous areas of extreme poverty. Over the past decade, the county relocated 96,700 people away from hilly, geological disaster-prone, and poverty-stricken areas.
Employment became a big thing after the relocation. The local government thus rolled out various follow-up measures, with one being the community factories like the one Zhang works in.
Through years of efforts, community factories in Pingli have prospered. They received compliments from the State Council Leading Group Office of Poverty Alleviation and Development, which named them one of the 10 best role models of targeted poverty alleviation in China. The National Development and Reform Commission also included community factories in its policy guidelines for post-relocation poverty alleviation.
However, Pingli did not become what it is now in days, or even months.
Starting from scratch
Persuaded by an investment promotion official in Pingli, Zhang Futao and Zhang Fuli decided to come back from Shenzhen and start a business in their hometown during the Spring Festival holiday in 2014.
Like many young people in Pingli who became migrant workers in wealthier southern China, the brother and sister duo had worked in Shenzhen since their teens. They grew from apprentices in an electronics factory into bosses of a little factory. However, the rising labor costs in Shenzhen had begun putting pressure on their business.
Workers of Zhang Fuli's community factory in Pingli county, northwestern China's Shaanxi Province, put on work clothes on July 26, 2018. [Photo/Xinhua]
Soon, the siblings opened a workshop making electronic components of headphone speakers in the family's house, and began to employ local workers. In mere months, the number of their employees jumped from six to 30.
"The export of labor services over the years gave birth to a batch of entrepreneurs like the Zhang siblings, bringing benefits to Pingli," said Tang Yiping, the Pingli official who got the brother and sister to come back. He said the family workshop was the prototype of Pingli's community factories.
According to Tang, other migrant workers of Pingli modeled after the workshop and began coming home to start businesses. This also made the county government more confident in supporting mass entrepreneurship. By the fall of 2014, a few workshops processing coils, gloves, and small gadgets had sprung up across the county.
Developing fast
Xi Jinghua was the person who opened the gloves workshop. To take better care of his parents and kids, he came back to his hometown from a wealthier coastal area in southeastern China after working there for 14 years.
A woman works in a gloves workshop in Pingli county, northwestern China's Shaanxi Province, on July 26, 2018. [Photo/Xinhua]
Within a few months, he opened two other workshops, and employed over 50 local workers in total. The large demand for gloves led Xi to open his fourth workshop in the spring of 2015. For this one, he selected a site in Yaofugou community in downtown Pingli, a community of 450 rural households relocated from landslide-prone areas.
Not long after the workshop had created 80 job opportunities, officials of Ankang city and Pingli county came to conduct research. From their findings, Pingli county soon decided to launch policies to encourage people to set up labor-intensive factories close to relocated communities.
In the summer of 2016, Xi began to cooperate with a gloves company based in Hong Kong, and planned to build over 10 community factories across the county with 5 million yuan. Hearing this, the chief of the nearby Dagui town visited Xi for opportunities to create jobs for Dagui's relocated people, and promised to waive rent and decoration expenses.
Within a month, a community factory opened in Dagui. Over 50 female workers produced gloves that were intended for the overseas market.
In two years, Xi established 17 community factories in total. The Zhang siblings also upgraded their family workshop into four community factories. According to the investment promotion official Tang Yiping, by the end of 2016, community factories had sprung up in all townships and towns in Pingli.
Benefiting relocated households
The first day Zhang Yundi began to work, she did not even know how to thread and had to learn how to use the sewing machine first. However, she did not expect to earn 50 yuan even though she produced nothing for the day.
A woman demonstrates sewing to a new worker in a community clothing factory in Pingli county, northwestern China's Shaanxi province, on July 26, 2018. [Photo/Xinhua]
She got familiar with the sewing machine in a few weeks and became a skilled worker in the factory. Taking out two pieces of fluffy white cloth, clamping them with a tweezer, and stitching them along jag edges, Zhang was able to sew up the teeth of a dinosaur toy in one go.
Zhang also processed a variety of other toy parts like grizzly bear tails and rooster wings. She said she could always find joy in this job every time there is a new assignment.
After finishing a day's work at 4:30 p.m., Zhang would go pick up her kids and go back to their 100-square-meter apartment. "I didn't think we could live such a good life before," she said, "The better is yet to come."
According to the head of Zhang's village, its 129 poor households have all moved to new homes. Eighty-nine moved into Jinping community, and people from 11 households there are now working in community factories.
The village also embraced new development. The over-66-hectare arable land of the villagers were transferred to specialized cooperatives and pharmaceutical companies to plant tea, walnuts, and medicinal herbs, and people of the village took shares of the profit.
By last April, the county had established 83 community factories, providing more than 6,000 jobs with an average monthly salary of over 2,000 yuan per person. Drawing on Pingli's experience, the whole Shaanxi province built up 1,365 community factories in total, employing 51,200 workers, including 15,500 people in poverty.
With one member of a family working in a community factory, all members of the household could get rid of poverty, and this was how Pingli lifted its people out of poverty, said the head of Pingli's poverty alleviation and development authority.
Considerate supports
In addition to encouraging migrant workers-turned-entrepreneurs to come back, Pingli in recent years also began to attract businesses from the outside. Despite being a poor county, it showed good faith through its policy kit: free workshop buildings for three years, conditional subsidies for water and electricity bills, 100,000 to 500,000 yuan in concessional loans to startups, and a subsidy of 1,800 yuan per employee for pre-employment trainings.
Gu Zhihong came to Pingli and set up a garment factory in May, 2019. "It is the entrepreneurial environment that makes my business thrive," Gu said. He said that, besides the rent and expense waivers, the county also offered epidemic prevention supplies as well as a stable supply of labor.
He is now running five community factories in the county, employing 400 people from several towns. Seeing the large demand for jobs, he is planning to open another factory.
"Although most of the community factories are small and micro enterprises (SMEs), the county puts a very high value on them as poverty alleviation rides on their development," the investment promotion official Tang said.
To help the factories stabilize employment, the Pingli county government has also set up nine daycare centers, and children of workers in nearby factories can go there after school free of charge.
With the policy support and the childcare and other services, 15 companies from outside Pingli have set up 38 community factories there. According to the county chief, these companies are all environmentally friendly SMEs with low energy consumption and little industrial pollution.
Pingli county was removed from the poverty list in February 2020.
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Ending poverty is like moving a mountain. But, deserves the effort. This is what governments are for after all.
