Some of the world's most dramatic landscapes can be found in the Nujiang Lisu Autonomous Prefecture, southwest China's Yunnan Province. 

Four vast mountain ranges stand shoulder to shoulder while three powerful rivers carve their way through deep valleys below, creating a terrain so rugged that it is often called the "wrinkles of the Earth."

Home to around 557,000 people, the region is one of China's most ethnically diverse. More than 90% of its population belongs to ethnic minority groups, including Lisu, Nu, Dulong and Pumi.

For decades, isolation defined life here. Steep terrain, fragile infrastructure and limited access to education and healthcare meant poverty endured long after other parts of China had begun to prosper.

That began to change in the past decade. Since 2012, China's central government has launched an intensive, state-led campaign to eliminate extreme poverty nationwide, with Nujiang among its most challenging frontiers. 

The effort has combined large-scale financial investment with targeted assistance from wealthier regions and state-owned enterprises.

Between 2014 and 2019, tens of billions of yuan in government funding were channeled into the prefecture. Additional support came from eastern cities such as Zhuhai, as well as major corporations including infrastructure and energy firms, bringing both capital and technical expertise.

Infrastructure has been at the heart of the transformation. 

Roads have been cut through mountains, bridges built across rivers, and access expanded to even the most remote villages. Where crossing a river once meant travelling by ropeway, paved roads now reach every administrative village. 

By late 2020, officials declared that all 269,600 registered impoverished residents in Nujiang had been lifted out of poverty, and the prefecture's four poorest counties had been removed from the national poverty list.

Chinese authorities describe the changes as "a leap across a thousand years." 

For observers, Nujiang offers a striking example of how geography, policy and political will can intersect, raising broader questions about development, sustainability and what comes next for communities once defined by isolation.