In April 2017, the Open University of China’s (OUC) Long March Belt Educational Project Targeted at Alleviating Poverty was formally initiated. Taking funds from its already tight budget, in an effort to block the intergenerational transmission of poverty, the OUC has moved to “root out poverty” in 25 poverty-stricken counties along the route of the Long March Belt covered by the Red Army. Since April 2017, the OUC has mobilised all of its system to promote the implementation of this ambitious and significant project.
It has overcome all kinds of difficulties in order to earnestly put in place targeted poverty alleviation and fruitful results have been made. Such audacity and courage are unprecedented among universities in China and even among open universities around the world. It experience and achievements are an inspiration for universities in China to serve society.
Poverty alleviation through education is our objective
Reporter: Since the 18th National Party Congress, General Secretary Xi Jinping has consistently put forward the strategic concept of “targeted poverty alleviation.” The report of 19th National Party Congress states that, “Particular attention will be paid to helping people increase confidence in their own ability to lift themselves out of poverty.” Can you please explain your understanding of “targeted poverty alleviation?”
Yang Zhijian: Since the 18th National Party Congress, the Party Central Committee with Comrade Xi Jinping at its core has made targeted poverty reduction and alleviation their major task. This task is significantly positioned within China’s governance mechanism, elevating the Party’s anti-poverty practices to a new level. It has been said that, “Whether we are well-off is measured by whether our villagers are well-off or not.” Only the common prosperity of the entire nation can be considered to be genuine prosperity and only a moderately prosperous society for people of all ethnic groups can be considered to be a genuine society. Ensuring all rural residents living below the poverty line have been lifted out of poverty and poverty is eliminated in all poor counties and regions by the year 2020 is the bottom line in building a moderately prosperous society. This is the solemn promise made to all the people of China by our Party.
Yang Zhijian, secretary of the OUC CPC Committee and OUC president, conducting an investigation in a national poverty-stricken county
Poverty alleviation involves a wide range of fields and one of the key ones is poverty alleviation through education. On several occasions, General Secretary Xi Jinping has underlined the necessity to block the intergeneration transmission of poverty. Particular attention will be paid to helping people increase confidence in their own ability to lift themselves out of poverty. The important role of education is bound to be brought into full play in targeted poverty alleviation. According to my understanding, one of the reasons that many households get trapped in poverty is because of the lack of wealth creation channels due to delayed industrial development in poverty-stricken areas. Another reason is the lack of knowledge and skills for achieving prosperity through hard work as a consequence of poor education. Furthermore, ability needs to be combined with the confidence to lift oneself out of poverty. Efforts should also be made to eradicate spiritual poverty. Only with ambition and confidence can passive poverty alleviation be transformed into a positive rise to fortune and education is needed in order for all this to take place. Therefore, education is a fundamental method of blocking the intergenerational transmission of poverty.
Reporter: In order to win the battle against poverty, people and institutions from all walks of life must band together, the OUC included. Why is the OUC facing this fight with such enthusiasm?
Yang Zhijian: Poverty alleviation needs to mobilise the energy of society as a whole and poverty alleviation through education needs the extensive involvement of primary and middle schools and universities throughout China. As far as the OUC is concerned, this is our goal in running our university. The educational philosophy of the OUC targets the masses, rural areas, border areas, and areas with large ethnic minority populations. The improvement of the public’s happiness index is where the value of the OUC lies. To this end, we have always focuses on poverty-stricken groups and other special groups in the hope of improving their lives and helping them face up to an ever-changing future. We don’t aim to turn our students into science or technology leaders, business elites, or political professionals. What we do aim to do is improve their overall skills and personal qualities, enabling them to solve real difficulties in their everyday life and work. If we accomplish that, then we have fulfilled our social responsibility to promote equal access to education.
We have been working hard to achieve poverty-alleviation through education, which is demonstrated by composition of the OUC student body. At present, we have nearly four million active students across China. More than 70 percent of these students come from grassroots communities and 55 percent are in border areas and areas with large ethnic minority populations in China’s central and western regions. We have 200,000 rural students, 120,000 non-commissioned officer students, 270,000 students from minority ethnic groups, and 6,000 disabled students.
Last year, we launched the Long March Belt Educational Project Targeted at Alleviating Poverty and in fact, the OUC has been advancing poverty alleviation through many of its special projects. The university started to implement the One College Student per Village Programme sponsored by the Ministry of Education, which in recent years has become the Rural College Student Cultivation Project, as early as 2004. Anyone with the ability to learn who lives in a rural area can register for the university for free. To date, the One College Student per Village Programme has enrolled a total of 610,000 rural students, of which 400,000 have graduated. It has trained a large number of leaders in obtaining wealth through science and technology, leaders in disseminating advanced culture, and leaders in practicing lifelong learning.
In addition, during the 11th, 12th, and 13th Five-Year-Plan periods, the OUC has been providing educational assistance to border areas and areas with large ethnic minority populations. We have helped the Tibet University to build the OUC Tibet School and provide more opportunities for local people to receive higher education. We have provided Xinjiang with special assistance for bilingual teaching, online platform construction, and resource development. Around 300 cloud classrooms have been built in Xinjiang, Tibet, Qinghai, Gansu and other western regions. The dream of students from all over attending one remote class has become a reality, effectively mitigating the effects of teacher shortages in remote areas. We are also cooperating with Hunan Radio and TV University (RTVU). We have given 18,600 rural students free Learning O Pad learning terminals, developed the West Yunnan Learning Network (dianxi.nerc-edu.com), and built OUC Book Houses in remote areas with large ethnic minority populations.
The OUC should do more with greater affection
Reporter: The Long March Belt Educational Project Targeted at Alleviating Poverty is a highlight of the OUC’s poverty alleviation through education. Can you please tell us about the implementation of the project?
Yang Zhijian: I started to think seriously about poverty alleviation as early as 2015. For me, as a new type of university in China, the OUC should do more for poverty alleviation with greater affection and we needed to find where to break through. With this is mind, I have visit a number of former revolutionary base areas, Ganzhou City in Jiangxi Province in particular, to conduct investigations, which really touched me. Without the help, protection, and support of the people in the former revolutionary base areas during the difficult revolutionary period, our revolution wouldn’t have succeeded. This is all the more true in the areas covered by the men and women of the Red Army during their Long March, where ordinary local people followed the revolution without hesitation. It has been 70 years since the success of the revolution but some people in former revolutionary base areas are still living in poverty. We should find ways to support and help them as soon as possible. The OUC is a university targeted at broad-base rural areas and specific groups with an educational system that covers the entire country. It is also equipped with advanced distance education tools and methods. We can rely on these advantages and characteristics to offer genuine help to people in former revolutionary base areas.
In 2016, we decided on a clear train of thought, that is, to start in Jiangxi and carry out targeted poverty alleviation along the route covered by the Red Army, and thus the Long March Belt Educational Project Targeted at Alleviating Poverty was born. Poverty alleviation through education began with RMB 120 million of funding that we raised ourselves.
As a member of the nation and a member of the Party, I have always thought that General Secretary Xi Jinping’s concept of poverty alleviation is very great.
Reporter: What are the tasks and concepts of the Long March Belt Educational Project Targeted at Alleviating Poverty? What achievements have been made?
Yang Zhijian: With the RMB 120 million of funding raised, the OUC plans to spend four years from 2017 to 2020 providing partner assistance to 25 national poverty-stricken counties in 12 provinces, autonomous regions, and municipalities under the directly jurisdiction of the central government along the Long March route. Our methodology includes providing training for rural community cadres, offering learning opportunities for poor people, and giving free professional skills trainings. The OUC has set up special scholarships and fellowships to sponsor students and help them to finish learning, strengthened base construction for the educational project targeted at poverty alleviation, and improved the educational conditions of the study centres, helping people in former revolutionary areas to get over poverty.
The basic idea is to select specific sites in oder to coordinate the system and help as much as possible. Using the route of the Long March as the core, the educational project targeted at alleviating poverty is carried out in selected national poverty-stricken counties. The OUC coordinates with the 12 provincial, autonomous regional, and municipal branches and the relevant local schools and study centres, unifies the deployment, and creates a clear division of work for joint implementation. It also joins up with social groups, government institutions, and enterprises to advance poverty alleviation through collaboration. All of this has to be based on the reality of the OUC, in order to make an accurate assessment of the needs, to make a rational utilisation of resources, and to try to make targeted poverty-alleviation efforts, since poverty alleviation should reach those who truly need it and deliver genuine outcomes. Policies that match local conditions have been adopted in order to offer real help to the poor groups and achieve tangible results.
Since the launch of the Long March Belt Educational Project Targeted at Alleviating Poverty, phased achievements have been made, which have been recognised by the Leading Party Group of the Ministry of Education. To date, more than RMB 20 million has been invested, benefitting over 25,000 poor people and rural students, and the operational conditions and abilities of the study centres have been improved.
Reporter: Apart from the Long March Educational Project Targeted at Alleviating Poverty, what other steps to reduce poverty has the OUC taken?
Yang Zhijian: The OUC is comprehensively implementing all of the poverty alleviation tasks through education deployed by the Ministry of Education, including its commitment to poverty reduction through education in areas affected by extreme poverty in the three regions (Tibet Autonomous Region, the Tibetan Region of Sichuan, and the four prefectures of Kashi, Hotan, Aksu, and Kezilesu in South Xinjiang Ugur Autonomous Region) and three prefectures (Liangshan Yi Autonomous Prefecture in Sichuan, Lujiang Lisu Autonomous Prefecture in Yunnan, and Linxia Hui Autonomous Prefecture in Gansu), offering partner assistance to improve the educational conditions of the corresponding radio and TV universities. The OUC is participating in the Ministry of Education’s East-West Coordination in Poverty Alleviation action plan. The OUC headquarters has taken the initiative to create assistance partners with local open universities or radio and TV universities in order to collaboratively build community-level study centres. It is participating in the poverty alleviation efforts of the Ministry of Education in fixed contact with West Yunnan. It is involved in the implementation of teachers trainings in information technology aimed at strengthening the Ministry of Education’s efforts in building a rural teaching team in Xinjiang’s Aksu Prefecture. It has participated in the popularisation of the Ministry of Education’s poverty-alleviation action plan. Finally, it has implemented poverty alleviation through education in Tongliao City, Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region.
President Yang Zhijian conducts a poverty alleviation investigation in Shangyou County, Jiangxi Province in February 2017
Targeted poverty alleviation will be carried out on a larger scale
Reporter: The OUC has been stepping up its efforts to advance poverty alleviation through education. What is the relationship between this and the OUC as a “new type” of university?
Yang Zhijian: In his speech at the National Education Conference, General Secretary Xi Jinping underlined that efforts have to be made to conduct education that is rooted in the vast land of China. The fundamental meaning of this is to advance our educational work centred on China’s national conditions, cultural characteristics, and actual situation. The open university is a new type of university that shares feature with open universities around the world. However, open universities in China are also different from those in foreign countries in a number of different ways, such as their purpose and mission, and their construction model that includes development. The most important feature of the OUC is equal priority to degree and non-degree education. It not only focuses on students on campus but also on the various needs of society as a whole, especially with regards to meeting the need for lifelong learning for all. It can be said that poverty alleviation through education epitomises the established characteristics of open universities in China, in that it is orientated towards social demand and aimed at social responsibility in an open and flexible way.
Reporter: What are the OUC’s next steps for targeted poverty alleviation?
Yang Zhijian: The OUC will carry out targeted poverty alleviation on a larger scale and at a higher level. The Long March Belt Educational Project Targeted at Alleviating Poverty will enter a period of steady implementation. We will seek out problems, sum up our experiences, make adjustments and improvements, and seek practical results until poverty has been eliminated in all of the counties in 2020. Financial assistance for tuition fees for degree education students will run on to 2022. We will continue to advance the implementation of all the tasks of poverty alleviation through education deployed by the Ministry of Education. We will continue carrying out relevant poverty alleviation projects in “the three regions and three prefectures” affected by extreme poverty. According to the requirements of the Agreement to Assist Tibet and Xinjiang in the Thirteenth Five-Year-Plan Period and the overall arrangement of the educational project of the Ministry of Education targeted at alleviating poverty in “the three regions and three prefectures” affected by extreme poverty, the OUC will coordinate all the relevant internal departments to help with the further implementation and project approval of the agreement. Furthermore, we will put in place poverty alleviation assistance through education in Qinghai, sign and complete the relevant agreement, and implement the poverty alleviation measures laid out in the agreement.
All the OUC’s targeted poverty alleviation efforts, particularly the Long March Belt Educational Project Targeted at Alleviating Poverty, embody the OUC’s educational concept, characteristic advantages, and affection for former revolutionary areas. In the next stage, we will secure a decisive victory for poverty alleviation in a more pragmatic way, with more forceful measures, and with more targeted measures under the leadership of the Party Group of the Ministry of Education. We will try to lead poverty alleviation by helping people increase confidence in their own ability to lift themselves out of poverty, to block the intergenerational transmission of poverty, to strengthen people through education, to enrich people through skills, to give people peace of mind through employment, and to help former revolutionary areas to enter moderately prosperous society together with the rest of China. I believe that the OUC can and will play a greater role in securing a decisive victory in the fight against poverty and in entering a moderately prosperous society together.
By Liu Zenghui , E-Learning