East-west pairing assistance: China's 'Minning Model' for poverty alleviation

In northwest China, a small town named Minning bears an unlikely nickname: the "Golden Beach." The name may puzzle first-time visitors, as there is no beach in sight.

Three decades ago, however, the area was a barren expanse of gravel and sand. Today, farmers' annual per capita income has risen from less than 500 yuan (about $70) to more than 20,000 yuan. "Golden" no longer describes the land, but the opportunities and prosperity that have transformed it.

In 1996, China launched its east-west pairing assistance program, a long-term initiative that matches the country's more affluent eastern provinces and municipalities with less-developed western regions, providing financial, technical and human resource support to foster more balanced national development.

One of its flagship projects is Minning Town, established through a partnership between eastern Fujian Province and northwest China's Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region to help lift people out of poverty and foster long-term development.

Fujian established a dedicated task force for the program, headed by then deputy Party chief of the province Xi Jinping, who led inspection tours to impoverished areas in Ningxia and oversaw the establishment of Minning Village, which later grew into today's Minning Town.

Over the past 30 years, the partnership has driven rapid economic growth. Ningxia's per capita GDP has increased nearly 19-fold, with the "Minning model" becoming a blueprint for east-west pairing assistance across China. 

During a visit to Minning in July 2016, President Xi called for the Minning model to be promoted nationwide. At a symposium on east-west pairing assistance for poverty relief, he stressed that the east-west pairing assistance program should remain a long-term policy.

From desert to oasis

One of the hallmarks of the Minning model has been attracting outside investment to foster local industries.

Backed by investments from entrepreneurs from Fujian, Minning has developed a distinctive wine industry despite its harsh natural conditions. What was once an expanse of desert is now home to a vast vineyard oasis producing 26,000 tonnes of wine annually.

Chen Deqi, one of the first entrepreneurs from Fujian to invest in the area, recognized that Minning shared similar natural conditions with France's Bordeaux.

 Located at around 38.5 degrees north latitude, the area enjoys large day-night temperature differences, abundant sunshine and low rainfall, making it well suited for growing wine grapes.

More investors from Fujian followed. Today, 20 wineries operate in Minning, creating more than 80,000 local jobs and generating over 12 million yuan (about $1.67 million) in annual labor income.

At a press conference on June 11, the State Council Information Office said the east-west pairing assistance program has established nearly 800 industrial parks in western China over the past three decades. Between 2021 and 2025, the program also guided enterprises to invest more than 750 billion yuan (about $104 billion) in the region.

From one-way assistance to shared development

Today, Minning is no longer a town dependent on outside support. Instead, it has become an industrial partner that complements Fujian's economy.

Western China offers abundant land as well as rich renewable energy resources from wind and solar power. By combining these advantages with Fujian's digital economy, Minning supports the expansion of computing power and artificial intelligence (AI) development.

A smart computing center began operations in Minning Industrial Park in June, providing large-scale computing capacity for AI model training for companies in Xiamen, Fujian Province. The facility enables computing workloads to be transferred in real time to Minning's green computing infrastructure.

Chinese experience goes global

The Minning experience is reaching beyond China, with knowledge and expertise developed through the partnership now benefiting other developing countries.

In June, 24 participants from six countries, including Rwanda and The Gambia, visited Minning to attend the inauguration of a Juncao technology workstation with Lin Zhanxi, a professor at Fujian Agriculture and Forestry University. Juncao is a Chinese-developed technology that uses grasses to cultivate edible mushrooms.

In 1997, Lin traveled to Pengyang County in Ningxia as part of the Minning pairing assistance program. Working from an abandoned cave dwelling, he taught local farmers how to cultivate mushrooms.

Within a decade, about 17,500 farming households in Ningxia had adopted the technology, increasing their annual incomes by more than 5,000 yuan on average. Today, the region produces more than 90 million mushroom cultivation bags each year, with an output value of 680 million yuan (around $95 million).

Lin took the technology overseas in 2000, bringing it to Africa, where it has helped people cultivate mushrooms and improve livelihoods. Now the 84-year-old professor often reflects on how the global journey of Juncao technology began in a cave dwelling in Ningxia.

China's east-west pairing assistance program has drawn growing international attention.

"The solidarity and mutual assistance between different provinces is an institutional innovation unique to China," said Yasser Maamoun, a member of the Political Bureau of the Egyptian Communist Party, after visiting Minning.

Witnessing the town's transformation from barren desert into today's "Golden Beach" through decades of support from Fujian, he described east-west pairing assistance as a key pillar of China's poverty alleviation achievements.