By Zhu Lei, Xu Yuanfeng, Ye Qi, Qin Ruijie, People’s Daily
In northwest China’s Ningxia Hui autonomous region lies a township called Minning. Its name combines the Chinese abbreviations for southeast China’s Fujian province — “Min” — and Ningxia — “Ning,” symbolizing a partnership that has spanned more than 4,000 kilometers and become one of China’s most celebrated examples of east-west cooperation in poverty alleviation.
Not long ago, 81-year-old Lin Yuechan, former director of Fujian’s poverty alleviation office, returned to Minning with her granddaughter. Looking around, the young girl asked, “Grandma, there’s no sand here. Why call it ‘Golden Beach’? The answer awaited at the township’s historical exhibition center.
Minning Township has evolved into a living testament to China’s east-west paired assistance program. In 1996, the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee launched a nationwide strategy to promote poverty alleviation cooperation between the more developed eastern regions and the less-developed western regions.
Chinese President Xi Jinping, then a senior official in Fujian, oversaw the progress of pairing-off cooperation between Fujian and Ningxia. Under his leadership, Fujian and Ningxia took the lead in establishing a joint conference mechanism, creating city- and county-level partnership arrangements, and initiating mutual exchanges of officials through temporary assignments.
Lin, who traveled between Fujian and Ningxia more than 40 times, is a witness to the close cooperation between the two places.
In 1997, this cross-country cooperation gave birth to Minning village. Lin, then executive deputy director of the Fujian-Ningxia cooperation office, turned the first shovelful of earth at the groundbreaking ceremony.
At the time, the settlement was little more than a barren stretch of desert. Sandstorms swept across the Gobi landscape. There were no formal classrooms or blackboards; local students wrote on the ground with tree branches. The first settlers lived in cave dwellings dug into the earth.
Yet in a congratulatory letter, Xi, then deputy secretary of the CPC Fujian Provincial Committee, envisioned a bright future: “This village is just a barren sandy expanse today, but one day it will become a golden beach.
Nearly three decades on, that vision has become reality.
The Fujian-Ningxia partnership has now entered its thirtieth year. Thanks to the sustained efforts of officials and residents from both regions, what was once a desolate wasteland has grown into a prosperous township of 66,000 people, where relocated residents now earn more than 20,000 yuan ($2,945) per person annually.
From poverty alleviation to rural revitalization, from digging wells and building terraced fields to establishing industries, from resettling impoverished communities to fostering cultural integration, the significance of Fujian-Ningxia cooperation has only become more apparent with time.
Over the past 30 years, Fujian has allocated 7.68 billion yuan ($1.13 billion) for assistance for Ningxia. More than 4,100 cooperative projects have been implemented, benefiting 2.44 million people. More than 160 Fujian-Ningxia poverty alleviation demonstration villages and 423 relocation communities have taken root across Ningxia. All 803,000 impoverished people in the autonomous region had been lifted out of poverty as of 2020.
As China enters a new phase of high-quality development, Fujian-Ningxia cooperation is moving steadily toward higher-quality growth.
At the Lanwan ecological aquaculture base beneath the Helan Mountains, the water in the ponds is crystal clear and teems with shrimp, mud crabs, and large yellow croaker.
“At first, no one believed this could work here,” said Qiang Zuozhou, who runs the facility. “But the pilot projects and technology proved everyone wrong.”
Aquaculture experts from Fujian’s city of Ningde spent more than two decades tackling challenges ranging from water quality control and fry breeding to environmental adaptation, eventually turning the idea of “raising marine fish inland” into reality.
Ningxia now annually produces over 2,000 tons of alternative aquatic products (“seafood”), establishing itself as the most diverse and productive fishery region among China’s five northwest provincial-level areas.
Meanwhile, new models of cooperation — “Fujian enterprises plus Ningxia resources,” “Fujian technology plus Ningxia application scenarios,” and “Fujian markets plus Ningxia products” — have flourished.
This partnership has spawned 12 industrial parks hosting nearly 400 companies with an annual output value approaching 35 billion yuan ($5.15 billion). Approximately 6,000 Fujian-owned enterprises maintain stable operations in Ningxia.
On June 1, 24 trainees from six countries, including Rwanda and Gambia, gathered in Minning township. Together with Professor Lin Zhanxi from Fujian Agriculture and Forestry University, they inaugurated a Fujian-Ningxia Juncao technology workstation.
“This takes me back to Ningxia,” remarked the 84-year-old professor, recalling his experiences promoting the mushroom cultivation technique in Africa. “Juncao’s international journey began in Xihaigu’s cave dwellings.”
In 1997, responding to the Fujian-Ningxia cooperation initiative, Lin traveled to Pengyang county in Ningxia and taught local farmers how to cultivate mushrooms in abandoned cave dwellings while guaranteeing the purchase of their products.
“A single growing season dispelled their initial skepticism,” he noted. Farmers quickly discovered that “three cellars yielded more income than planting 1.8 hectares of wheat.”
Within a decade, 17,500 households across Ningxia adopted Juncao-based mushroom cultivation, increasing mushroom growers’ annual incomes by more than 5,000 yuan ($736) on average. Today, the region produces more than 90 million edible fungus sticks annually, generating an output value of 680 million yuan ($100 million).
In 2000, Lin took Juncao technology overseas. Today, the technology has taken root in 106 countries and regions worldwide.
Fujian lies at the starting point of the ancient Maritime Silk Road, while Ningxia serves as a key hub along the New International Land-Sea Trade Corridor. Together, Fujian and Ningxia have found ever-broader pathways for cooperation.
In recent years, Ningxia has fully integrated into the corridor. The “Minning” freight train now carries goods from Yinchuan to Southeast Asia, while direct flights from Ningxia to Dubai deliver the autonomous region’s cool-climate vegetables to Middle Eastern dining tables in just eight hours.
At the seventh China-Arab States Expo, 12 new energy projects with total investment of approximately 8.4 billion yuan ($1.23 million) were signed, and a number of projects have been launched in Belt and Road partner countries.
The world has taken notice of the wisdom embodied in the Fujian-Ningxia partnership.
Over the past three decades, China’s east-west cooperation program has continued to enrich the forms of assistance, deepen integration, and expand platforms for collaboration.
The Fujian-Ningxia experience is a powerful illustration of this progress. In 2025, Ningxia’s per capita GDP reached 77,981 yuan ($11,478), nearly 19 times higher than the 3,926 yuan ($578) recorded in 1996, while the gap between the autonomous region and the national average has continued to narrow.
Fujian-Ningxia cooperation across three decades transforms desert settlement into thriving community
