THE arduous fight for poverty reduction in China is approaching its end as the country’s poor population is planned to be lifted out of extreme poverty by the end of 2020.

Among all the areas that are gearing up for the final victory, the Macao Special Administrative Region (SAR) Government, which doesn’t normally make its way into headlines on poverty alleviation, has actually been contributing its share to the motherland’s great cause.

Since last year, Macao has been providing help for the poverty reduction in Congjiang County of the Chinese Mainland’s Southwest Guizhou Province.

With a GDP volume of 6.67 billion yuan (US$992.3 million) — only 1/35 that of Macao in 2018 — Congjiang is considered as a county with serious poverty. It has also been designated as a key target for development-oriented poverty alleviation.

In May 2018, by signing a cooperation framework agreement with the Guizhou Government, the Macao SAR Government, together with the Liaison Office of the Central People’s Government in Macao, set up a mechanism to coordinate different projects for Congjiang County’s poverty relief in fields such as education, trade and economy, tourism, personnel training and cultural exchange.

In an interview with CGTN Digital, Ng Siu Lai, deputy to the National People’s Congress from the Macao delegation, said that in her eyes, education is the area that has seen the most notable achievements.

According to her, companies from Macao have planned to invest 5 million yuan in constructing school buildings that will accommodate 800 students in Congjiang. The project is scheduled to be accomplished by May this year.

New kindergartens will also be built and old ones renovated, Ng added.

She also spoke highly of the efforts made by teachers from Macao to communicate and exchange teaching experience with local teachers.

Wong Yu Kai, a member of the National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), who is also from Macao, emphasized that the help from Macao in alleviating poverty in Congjiang goes beyond financial means, during a conversation with CGTN Digital.

Macao and Congjiang have also cooperated on human resources. Among the nine agreements signed between Macao and Guizhou, one agreement laid out a plan to bring 500 workers from Guizhou to Macao until 2023, with most of them coming from Congjiang.

Chen Wei is one such worker. Before coming to Macao to work as a security guard at the University of Macao, he didn’t have a steady job in his hometown.

Chen said he is pretty happy about working in Macao as the salary is much higher than what he used to be paid. The benefits are also better, according to Chen.(CGTN)