In a village 91 kilometers from downtown Beijing, a once-forgotten hamlet surrounded by over 30,000 acres of peach blossoms is reinventing itself. Cafés, glasshouse lounges, book bars, farmers’ markets, and pet-themed playgrounds now line the village lanes.
Just three years ago, fewer than one-third of the village’s homes were occupied. Most young people had left in search of work elsewhere. But over the past two years, the number of returnees has risen by 20 percent, as long-abandoned houses were renovated, rented out, and turned profitable.
“I find it useful to think of anti-poverty policy as having a demand side and a supply side,” said Renato Domith Godinho, Director of the Global Alliance Against Hunger and Poverty. “The demand side fills an income gap directly through cash programs like China’s Dibao or Brazil’s Bolsa Família. The supply side is different. It does not transfer income. It builds the environment, the capacity, and the human and physical capital that allow people to play a productive role in the economy.”
“In cities, markets can do much of this work. But in rural areas, in remote villages, markets alone are not enough. The state has to provide the push. Where China is especially strong, in our view, is on the supply side,” he commented, pointing to industrial development reaching poor households, large-scale relocation from inhospitable areas, ecological compensation programs that turned poor farmers into forest rangers, and village-level coordination led by resident officials.