Ningbo has been playing an active role in poverty alleviation in Qianxinan Bouyei and Miao autonomous prefecture, Guizhou province. 

China has vowed to eliminate abject poverty by 2020, and Guizhou is the main battleground in this crucial fight. 

Qianxinan was paired with Ningbo under the "pairing assistance" program launched by the central government, which requires more prosperous provinces and municipalities in East China to lend support to less developed regions of the country. 

This year, the city has rolled out 115 projects worth 420 million yuan ($60.8 million) to support the prefecture in tackling poverty. To date, 96 of the projects have been completed, while the rest are still ongoing.

Efforts have been made to help impoverished individuals in Qianxinan seek employment. 

In April, the two sides signed a number of agreements to deepen bilateral ties in labor cooperation and help poor rural residents from Qianxinan gain employment in Ningbo. Official data shows that Ningbo has helped nearly 20,000 residents from the prefecture find work in Zhejiang over the past 24 years.

In addition, Ningbo has also sent a total of 123 cadres and about 20,000 professionals to Qianxinan to offer support in education, medicine, and agriculture.

A total of 207 impoverished villages in the prefecture have been paired up with 210 enterprises, 114 well-off villages and 33 social organizations in Ningbo.

Enterprises and individuals from the city have donated 65.52 million yuan in social assistance to Qianxinan prefecture so far this year.

Qianxinan has made remarkable strides in poverty relief in recent years. From 2016 to 2019, a total of 435,400 poor people in the region were lifted out of poverty, four counties and cities in the region shed poverty, and the number of impoverished families in Qianxinan was reduced to 12,306.