Guizhou authorities are fighting poverty with a strategy which pays people to study, raise fewer children and move to better furnished homes.
Luo Yi Xin Zhai village near Guiyang, the provincial capital, was built with a government grant of 490,000 yuan (HK$457,700) in February 1995.
Twenty-five families from the Miao ethnic group, living in old hillside huts six kilometres away, were relocated. Each family was given a cow, a pig, three rabbits, two plots of arable land, and resettlement expenses of up to 800 yuan.
Their new homes were equipped with electricity, running water and other modern conveniences.
There was also a television satellite dish for the 110 villagers, 90 per cent of whom had never been to Guiyang's urban area.
Last year, the village's annual per capita income reached 750 yuan, nearly triple the 1993 figure, Fu Hong, of the Communist Party's local propaganda department, said.
