From a farmer to a salaried worker, villager Metkasim Meshirip has managed to get rid of poverty, thanks to an employment-based poverty alleviation strategy in northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region. In Xinjiang, about 645,000 people were lifted out of poverty in 2019, reducing the poverty rate to 1.2 percent from 6.1 percent a year earlier. The region still needs to lift an additional 165,000 people out of poverty to meet the 2020 poverty alleviation goal, a tough but must-win battle for China. Yutian County, located in Xinjiang's Hotan Prefecture, is home to 289,000 people, and a quarter of them, or 123,000 people, are living in poverty. In order to assist local farmers and herdsmen into work in nearby neighborhoods, the county government established nine factory areas.