Maripo, China – The rural villages of Maripo are a world away from shining Chinese cities like Beijing and Shanghai. Elementary school students crouching down on the sidewalk for a quick breakfast, and even local officials complained that remote mountain villages lacked access to the latest 5G internet connection.
However, Chinese officials point to the overall progress of this thickly forested, highly mountainous border region in southwestern China as a reason for “confidence” in the country’s development model and in its ability to survive a trade war with the United States.
“We are fully confident in our ability to overcome all the difficulties,” Deputy Minister Hua Tuning said last week during a government-sponsored trip to rural areas in Maripo, Yunnan, located on the border with Vietnam.
“We really don’t want war when it comes to what the US is doing, but if we have to face reality, we have no fear at all,” she told reporters at the middle school. “Normal people already feel the pain of the tariff war, so we really hope that (we) government will return to normal.”
Hua showed the effectiveness of President Donald Trump’s resistance to tariffs “bullying” before the US and China agreed to cut tariffs on each other’s imports, as Beijing said.
She and other officials said Maripo and hundreds of “village groups,” spread across several towns, with 233,000 people spreading across several towns, are models of China’s poverty alleviation efforts in recent decades. Maripo’s disposable income per capita was $2,300 per year last year, compared to about $69 per year in 1992.
But Beijing’s publicly declared confidence denies real concerns about the work that must be done as China struggles with structural imbalances and slowing economic growth, and the potential impact of US tariffs.
This situation extends to urban disparities in China and is evident to residents of Maripo.
“The economy isn’t that good,” said Liu Huixin, a vendor selling Vietnamese and Thai processed fruits and other products in the market.
“Look at a lot of shops around, people aren’t buying,” he said.
Ending “absolute poverty” – The goals President Xi Jinping said he officially achieved at the end of 2020 are considered essential to reduce income inequality in the world’s second largest economy striving to keep up with the United States.
With over 450 million people living in rural areas, over 1.4 billion people living in rural areas, it is important to spend more on consumer products.
China is also promoting its “poverty alleviation” programme as a model for developing countries in the global southern region facing similar challenges.
“Malipo’s experience in poverty alleviation has global importance,” said Liu Guiqing, a 40-year-old Chinese diplomat, China’s diplomat, Liu Guiqing, is also a 40-year-old Chinese diplomat, who is also the deputy mayor of Maripo, under a program that partners with central government ministries and wealthy states and poor regions.
Hua said the strength of China’s system is its ability to “focus resources” on the urgent needs of people. Beijing is believed to have spent hundreds of billions of dollars on poverty alleviation since 2015.
To “emphasize the perceived failures of free free market capitalism” by Harvard Kennedy School historian and political scientist Lana Mitter, China’s approach to reducing inequality combined with “forced top-down control” efforts to “emphasize the perceived failures of free free market capitalism.”
Programs like Maripo “a growingly important part of China’s messaging, with development solutions for rural and urban areas,” he told NBC News.
“This is likely to be particularly appealing in many global tropical countries that still have a large agricultural sector and may turn to examples of China to find ways to modernize their own rural areas,” he said.
Companies investing in Maripo are still motivated by the “invisible hand of the power of the market,” said Jason Choi, director of Hong Kong-based conglomerate Sanwa Group.
He said the improved infrastructure and government support were key factors in his family’s company’s decision to invest around $7 million in a modern tea factory in Maripo, as well as the potential branding associated with the ancient tea trees in Maripo.
“We directly created jobs for over 100 people and about 10,000 people downstream and upstream,” said Choi, 25.
In nearby Jinping, a colorful group based in China’s technology hub specializing in graphics cards used in video games in another county targeting poverty alleviation, has invested around $15 million in smart farming companies and other ventures, creating production jobs for more than 200 people, and engaged in more contracts.
Its corn products are sold in China at Walmart’s Sam’s Club, 7-Eleven Shop, and e-commerce platform JD.com, and are also exported to Southeast Asia and elsewhere.
When asked about the impact of the US-China trade war, Mayor Xiao Changju, Mayor of Maripo, pointed out the prospects for rapid development of border trade with Vietnam and other Southeast Asian countries.
He also echoed the lines frequently used by Chinese officials, saying, “We don’t like fighting trade wars, but we’re not afraid of it.”