China Matters releases a talk show series on the development of southwest China’s Guizhou Province. The six-episode talk show, named The Talk with Guizhou, invites six guests from China and abroad to share their views on topics such as how Guizhou promotes rural revitalization, how local culture can give a boost to its tourism industry and how the province can build a better eco-system.
In this episode, China Matters talks to Alessandro Teixeira, a professor of Public Policy at Tsinghua University. Teixeira served as Brazil’s Minister of Tourism in 2016. He shares with us how Guizhou advances rural revitalization and what lessons can be learned from its experience.
Aiming at solving the serious rural issues, in 2017, China proposed the implementation of a rural revitalization strategy that involves improving the quality of agricultural development, promoting green development in rural areas, and enhancing rural culture and helping it flourish.
In Teixeira’s view, one of the challenges facing Guizhou is to continue increasing efficiency in agricultural production while identifying the target market. He sees how farmers from Guizhou sell agricultural products on social media platforms and believes it benefits them as livestreaming marketing can help generate direct income by cutting the middlemen.
Besides boosting income, rural development also involves the utilization of technology and innovation. Guizhou is using big data to analyze the families and individuals in need of financial support. Teixeira says the big data industry can overflow to other sectors to push forward Guizhou’s high-quality growth.
“One of the key lessons that Guizhou is teaching China and the world is how you use technology to tackle a problem that was poverty alleviation and rural revitalization,” says Teixeira, “and how you can spin off this to other sectors.”