"From the perspective of common prosperity, East-West collaboration is a long-term arrangement, and in the new era, East-West collaboration should reach new heights." On June 25th, at the main forum of the Second East-West Collaboration Forum for Rural Revitalization, Tang Min, Vice Chairman of the Youcheng Entrepreneurial Poverty Alleviation Foundation and Director of the East-West Collaboration Expert Committee, delivered a keynote speech titled "How East-West Collaboration Can Better Promote Rural Revitalization" via video link.
Tang Min's speech was divided into four parts: "How East-West Collaboration Helped in Poverty Alleviation," "Why East-West Collaboration is Still Needed in the New Era," "How East-West Collaboration Can Promote Rural Revitalization," and "The Historical Stage of Solidly Promoting Common Prosperity."
At the forum, Tang Min elaborated on the historical background and remarkable achievements of in-depth implementation of East-West poverty alleviation collaboration and explained the new deployments and requirements for further implementing East-West collaboration. "In the long run, East-West poverty alleviation collaboration is based on the national overall strategy for regional development, deepening regional cooperation, promoting the gradual transfer of eastern industries to the west, achieving industrial complementarity, personnel interaction, technology exchange, idea exchange, and style learning for mutual development," said Tang Min.
How to seize the new opportunities of East-West collaboration to better promote rural revitalization? From the perspective of common prosperity, Tang Min believes that East-West collaboration is a long-term arrangement, and East-West collaboration should reach new heights in the new era. Currently, East-West collaboration has shifted from poverty alleviation to broader development collaboration, further leveraging the role of market allocation of resources and transitioning from one-way assistance to mutual benefit. Only in this way can East-West collaboration be sustainable in the long run. For example, in terms of industrial transfer, an important component of East-West collaboration, the market should play a role in selecting the fittest. Even labor-intensive industrial transfers should be intensified, striving for one county to specialize in one or a few products to expand, deepen, and strengthen the industrial chain. At the same time, local entrepreneurs and enterprises should be gradually cultivated.
Under conditions, industrial transfers should also shift towards emerging digital industries. One issue in developing industries in the west is relatively high transportation costs. However, some digital-related industries, such as data annotation, have comparative advantages in the west and can be vigorously developed. Through the pair-assistance mechanism, the introduction of potentially developing new digital industries can be accelerated.
Tang Min suggests adding a special pair-assistance mechanism for labor-intensive industrial transfers under the existing East-West collaboration mechanism. Tang Min analyzes that there are several hundred labor-intensive industrial cluster counties or towns in eastern and central China, which can provide one-to-one or one-to-many pair-assistance to national key rural revitalization assistance counties in need, especially prioritizing the employment issue in 35,000 migrant resettlement sites, which is one of the key aspects of consolidating poverty alleviation achievements.
Tang Min believes that to further implement the new deployments and requirements of East-West collaboration, the role of enterprises and chambers of commerce and associations should be further leveraged to attract outstanding enterprises to participate in East-West collaboration and pair-assistance. The competition of the future is the competition of talents. It is necessary to make full use of educational resources from East-West collaboration, create conditions, and retain, attract, and bring back high-quality talents to the west.
Finally, Tang Min also suggests making full use of the participation of think tanks and social organizations to unite forces and jointly promote East-West collaboration to support rural revitalization.
