NEW urbanites resettled in Shaanxi’s Ankang from inhospitable mountainous areas have found secure jobs in local workshops that produces plush toys.

Starting in late 2017, when the plush toy industry relocated to the city from Changzhou in East China’s Jiangsu Province, Ankang has seen the rise of 569 companies based on toy-making within three years, said Wu Dalin, director of the administrative committee for the Hengkou demonstration zone in Ankang.

He added that the businesses now generate an annual output of close to 2.8 billion yuan (US$40.6 million) and create more than 12,000 jobs, including 3,000 for the once poor households.

Amid China’s poverty reduction drive, approximately 1 million poor people, who lived in inhospitable, poor, scattered mountainous regions in Ankang, moved to new urban residential communities, said Zhao Junmin, Party chief of Ankang.

“The gathering of populations provides fertile soil for labor-intensive industries like toy making,” Zhao said.

The city seized the opportunity from industrial relocation and offered incentive packages to toy-making businesses.

(Xinhua)