China Energy’s Great Achievements in Poverty Alleviation: Puge and Butuo Counties Lifted out of Poverty

The Sichuan provincial government issued a statement on November 16 announcing that Puge and Butuo in Liangshan Yi Autonomous Prefecture, both poverty-stricken counties with pairing assistance from China Energy, had shaken off poverty. Thus far, all of the nine China Energy-aided impoverished counties have come out of poverty.

Liangshan Yi Autonomous Prefecture, one of the “three regions and three prefectures” plagued by extreme poverty, is on the top of the China’s poverty alleviation list. Puge and Butuo, both mainly inhabited by ethnic minorities, were agriculture-based mountainous counties in deep poverty, with poverty incidence rates of 37.34 percent and 45.7 percent, respectively. Due to daunting challenges facing most impoverished regions such as isolated geographical location, weak infrastructure, economic backwardness, and inadequate development of social undertakings, the two counties were “tough bones to crack” compared to its peers in Liangshan Prefecture and even in Sichuan Province and the whole country.

Thanks to assistance of China Energy, three elementary schools were built in Puge and Butuo counties, creating opportunities for nearly 15,000 children to have access to education; greenhouses were constructed in Puge County to grow strawberries while online platforms were launched to help sell the agricultural products of Liangshan Prefecture; and training bases were established to improve farmers’ capabilities by providing various training courses for e-commerce practitioners, grassroots officials, technical personnel, agri-business entrepreneurs, and village doctors.

China Energy has sent 13 outstanding employees in different batches to take up provisional posts in Liangshan Prefecture, implemented 96 poverty alleviation projects, and invested 307 million yuan in total to help Liangshan Prefecture win the battle against poverty and assist Sichuan Province to lift all of its 88 poor counties out of poverty. China Energy was awarded by Sichuan Province as an advanced unit in poverty alleviation in 2019.