How Fujian and Ningxia build a shared future

On my fifth visit to Northwest China's Ningxia Hui autonomous region this year, I saw more clearly that the Fujian-Ningxia partnership is a model of how cooperation can turn differences into advantages.

My first visit was in 2021, when Ningxia and East China's Fujian province marked the 25th anniversary of their partnership. Five years later, I could see more clearly what three decades of cooperation had produced.

The most striking change was not a new building, industrial park, or modern road. It was something less visible but far more important: a growing sense that a region once constrained by poverty and difficult geography had acquired new choices. That is why the partnership matters so much to me.

That, to me, is the central lesson of the Fujian-Ningxia partnership: cooperation expands choices and turns differences into advantages.

This year marks the 30th anniversary of the pairing program, launched in 1996 as part of China's broader East-West cooperation program to reduce regional disparities. Fujian, a relatively prosperous coastal province, was paired with Ningxia, a landlocked region in northwestern China, particularly its desert and mountainous areas.

Thirty years later, the relationship has moved far beyond its original purpose. What began with poverty alleviation has evolved into industrial cooperation, technology transfer, human-capital development, employment, agricultural innovation, healthcare, education, and market integration. This evolution shows how the partnership has deepened over time.

The deeper lesson is that successful regional assistance needs an exit strategy — not an end to cooperation, but a shift from assistance to partnership that builds lasting capacity and shared development.

Over three decades, Fujian has allocated 7.68 billion yuan ($1.13 billion) for assistance to Ningxia. More than 4,100 cooperative projects have benefited approximately 2.44 million people. More than 160 demonstration villages and 423 relocation communities have been established. About 450,000 people were lifted out of poverty, while around 840,000 residents were relocated from environmentally fragile areas.

The more important question is what happened after the initial poverty-reduction efforts. The answer is increasingly visible in the regional economy, where the partnership's next phase has taken shape.

Fujian brought capital, technology, management expertise and market connections. Ningxia contributed land, resources and new development opportunities. Their differences became complementary rather than divisive.

Industrial cooperation is one of the clearest signs of this transition. Fujian and Ningxia have jointly built 12 industrial parks, hosting nearly 400 companies and generating annual output approaching 35 billion yuan. Around 6,000 Fujian-owned enterprises operate steadily in Ningxia.

This matters because poverty reduction cannot depend on government assistance indefinitely. Sustainable development requires businesses to create jobs and find markets, workers to acquire skills, supply chains to strengthen, and local economies to generate new sources of income. In this way, industrial cooperation becomes the link between assistance and self-sustaining growth.

Human mobility has also become an important part of the partnership. As of September 2025, 55,000 workers from Ningxia had secured long-term jobs in Fujian after targeted training at Ningxia Sanjiang Technical School. The Hemei Network's E-Commerce Workshop, recognized among the fifth Global Best Poverty Reduction Case Studies, has also helped create employment for women and generates average annual sales of 10 million yuan.

People are not merely beneficiaries of development; they are its most important carriers. A trained worker takes knowledge home, while a businessperson or student exposed to new markets and ideas can create opportunities for others. In this sense, human mobility becomes a form of development infrastructure, linking personal movement to broader regional change.

Ningxia offers a particularly striking lesson: innovation can overcome geographical limitations.

Ningxia is far from the sea, yet it has developed a growing inland aquaculture industry. In 2022, a collaboration between Fujian universities and Ningxia enterprises successfully farmed large coastal yellow croakers in inland saline-alkaline ponds using saline-alkaline water simulated seawater aquaculture technology. After years of experimentation and technical problem-solving, marine fish farming became a reality. Ningxia now produces more than 2,000 tons of seafood annually.

The significance goes beyond fish. It demonstrates that development does not always require eliminating geographical disadvantages; technology can sometimes redefine them. This example shows how innovation turns a local constraint into a new development path.

The introduction of Juncao technology to Pengyang county offers another example. Developed by Professor Lin Zhanxi of Fujian Agriculture and Forestry University, the technology helped more than 17,500 households in the Xihaigu region escape poverty over a decade.

For developing regions, the lesson is clear: technology becomes transformative not when it is simply imported, but when it is adapted to local realities. That is what gives it lasting value.