China is continuing with its mission to alleviate poverty even during the difficult pandemic period. Less developed areas are receiving help from government, social organizations and companies. New technologies and innovative ways have been used to promote local employment, farm product sales and tourism.

Pengshui County is located in the southwestern Chongqing Municipality. It's an important site for the Miao Minority, an ethnic group known for rich culture and handcraft works. The county had been lifted out of poverty earlier this year but the pandemic has made the local economy difficult again.

Tencent Games has moved in to provide some help. The first move was to offer jobs.

"Ever since Quantum Studio was set up in Chongqing last September, we've hired more than one hundred local team members. By June, there'll be more than 200 employees. Apart from offering jobs, we also outsource up to 60 percent of game design work load to local partners. So local graduates can either join our work force, or work for our partners. We prioritize help for graduates from Pengshui as trainees," said Yang Ruoxu, Quantum Studio general manager at Tencent Games.

The second move is directing game flows to shopping platforms. Tencent Games invited the county chief, together with singers and Internet characters to sell Pengshui's local food and farm products through livestreaming.

"We intentionally direct online flow from our games such as Game for Peace to shopping platforms like JD.com. And the flow turns out to be very significant and our Pengshui shop on JD.com has become the most popular among all local specialty shops," said Liao Kan, marketing director of Tencent Games.

The third move is even more innovative – IP promotion. The game developer puts Miao Minority embroidery and architecture into their games, so that players will notice the feature and participate in protecting the culture.

"We help promote Pengshui's tourism by injecting its local cultural IP. We embed Pengshui's local Miao Minority embroidery and architecture into our games, so that players will grow interested in that culture. Some of them will visit Pengshui in the future, and their spending will help local tourism," Liao added.

Technology has never been so useful in helping people in poverty. Remote areas have beautiful scenery, embroidery and exotic food. Mobile games have huge inflows of people and young consumers. With technology and smart innovation, a great difference can be made.

(Cover image via VCG)