Reducing poverty through the promotion of culture is an important means for rural revitalization and building a moderately prosperous society in all respects.

Tan Xuewen, a research fellow of the Rural Development Institute under the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said that initially, poverty relief through culture was mainly reflected in the following programs: encouraging cultural activities, developing the cultural industry and cultural market, promoting cultural exchanges, and constructing talent teams. This approach aimed at enriching the spiritual life of farmers in poverty-stricken areas by letting culture play its role in improving farmers’ knowledge and aspirations. As more policies have come out, poverty relief through culture has gradually turned into a tool for improving farmers’ knowledge and aspirations. Poverty relief through culture has played an important part in encouraging, inspiring, broadening the horizons of and inducing a self-driving force in local people.

Advancing the construction of economic, political, cultural, social and ecological civilizations can help us build an effective and long-acting poverty alleviation mechanism in poverty-stricken areas, said Wu Dahua, secretary of the party committee of the Guizhou Academy of Social Sciences.

Professor Fan Yugang from the Party School of the Central Committee of the CPC (National Academy of Governance) said that judging from the goal of building a great modern socialist country, culture is an important part of the general layout of China’s five-pronged approach to building socialism with Chinese characteristics. Lifting people out of poverty through culture is an important part of the nationwide system of poverty reduction.

Fan stressed that the first step in poverty reduction is to invest in the people. A fundamental and effective poverty-relief mechanism for the long run requires us to not only improve poor people’s ability to self-develop but also nourish their will to shake off poverty. Improving poor people’ knowledge and aspirations directly concerns the quality of poverty relief endeavors, as it affects the induction of self-driving forces among impoverished people and the consolidation of the final outcome. By investing in people, we can help the poor break away from the negative mindset of “wait and depend on others’ charity.”

Advancing poverty relief through culture and education helps to improve poor people’s culture and skills, which is the ultimate measure for stopping poverty from passing down through the generations.

Wang Chao, a professor from Guizhou University of Finance and Economics, said that we must continue to prioritize rural education by investing more, improving the conditions for running schools and teachers’ educational skills and driving informatization in rural education. We need to keep students at school and reduce the dropout rate, and we must ensure nine-year compulsory education in rural areas. To uproot poverty, we need to create a system linking compulsory education in junior high schools to senior high schools or rural vocational education. We need to develop rural vocational education and all levels and all types of professional training to produce more educated farmers with knowledge of technology.

We must develop strengths and avoid weaknesses when conducting poverty relief. Tan pointed out that simply holding cultural activities in rural areas may not meet the expectations of impoverished people, especially those living in areas with a lower poverty headcount ratio. In this case, cultural service facilities may not have the desirable effect. Therefore, while sticking to the general direction, it is important for us to go on more field visits, so that we can better understand the actual needs of the poor. Meanwhile, we need to closely combine cultural activities with educational activities and the building of rural civilization.

“Taking off the hat of poverty” is not the end of the mission. On the contrary, it is the beginning of a new life and a new fight. After the battle of poverty elimination, we will need more measures to consolidate what we have achieved.