The Focus Report of CCTV on the evening of December 23 devoted 10 minutes (accounting for 2/3 of the total program length) to the consumption-based poverty alleviation moves taken by Chongqing University to help Lyuchun County, Yunnan Province. The special poverty alleviation moves of Chongqing University were highly praised as a sustainable approach, which encourages CQU alumni in the hot pot industry of Chongqing to purchase spices from Lyuchun County.

The program focused on the challenges encountered after development of characteristic industries in the poor areas, such as “how can the premium agricultural and sideline products be transported and sold and how can brand be established”. This program took the poverty alleviating measures taken by Chongqing University for Lyuchun County as an example to explore a long-term policy of industrial development and market-customer match-making for poor areas.

Since 2013, Chongqing University has been working with Lyuchun County to get rid of poverty. The poverty alleviation mainly focuses on basic education, agricultural technology training and other areas. In the past eight years, with the help of various poverty alleviation contributors, Lyuchun County has used natural resources to develop the agricultural products industry. In Lahu Village of Lyuchun County, residents started to plant edible fungus. Because of the warm climate and suitable soil and water, the edible fungus planted there grows very well. However, due to the remote location of Lyuchun County, the transportation poses a challenge, and the purchasers have no access to the mountain areas. How to transport the products has become the most challenging question to answer.

In order to facilitate marketing of the edible fungus and create demands, Chongqing University started to sell edible fungus in the supermarket of Chongqing University, called up students to sell edible fungus via internet broadcasting, and encouraged alumni to purchase edible fungus. With joint efforts of teachers and students, edible fungus was sold out. However, it is not a long-term policy to rely exclusively on the unpaid contribution of Chongqing University.

In order to further expand the sales of agricultural products of Lyuchun, Chongqing University decided to market the products extensively by mobilizing all possible forces. In view of the popularity of Chongqing hot pot, Chongqing University decided to introduce species, a special local product of Lyuchun, to the market of Chongqing. CQU teachers brought species from Lyuchun, like amomum tsao-ko and anise, to some of the biggest hot pot restaurants in Chongqing, and explained the advantages of the species to restaurant owners. In addition, CQU also organized for CQU alumni entrepreneurs to have on-line video meeting with species enterprises of Lyuchun. Furthermore, some trading and logistics enterprises were also called up to tackle the transportation challenges. Thanks to their joint efforts, desirable achievements have been made in sales of agricultural products of Lyuchun.

The achievements made by Chongqing University in poverty alleviation assistance have been widely covered by People’s Daily, Guangming Daily, Chongqing Daily and other central and municipal mainstream media in recent years.

Consumption-based poverty alleviation: How to transform products into commodities, December 23, 2020: Focus Report

https://tv.cctv.com/2020/12/23/VIDEHJbfkMs4dvFfM7QylCZV201223.shtml