YINCHUAN — A lifelong farmer from Northwest China's Ningxia Hui autonomous region, Wang Guozhong has taken on a new role at 64, stepping onto the stage as an actor.
He now stars as the lead in a play at See Minning Drama Village, a theater complex themed around the country's fight against poverty.
Located in Minning town in Ningxia's Yongning county, the complex stages more than 100 performances a day, with 36 original productions. Many are inspired by Minning's history of resettlement and development, with performers such as Wang drawing on their own experiences to bring those stories to life.
"When we cry on stage, it is because we really went hungry back then. When we laugh, it is because we are now living a life we once could only dream of," he says.
Wang was born in Xihaigu, a region the United Nations described in the 1970s as one of the least suitable places for human habitation because of severe drought and ecological fragility.
Three decades ago, China launched a pairing initiative linking coastal Fujian province with landlocked Ningxia as part of its east-west poverty alleviation program. At the time, Fujian's GDP stood at 260 billion yuan ($38.7 billion), compared with Ningxia's 20.29 billion yuan.
In 1997, construction began in Minning on barren land near Yinchuan, the regional capital.
The cross-provincial effort transformed the settlement into a modern town. Its population has grown from about 8,000 to more than 60,000, with residents making a living largely from wine grapes, mushrooms, goji berries, and cattle.
The theater complex has become another source of employment.
Since opening in July, it has created jobs and boosted incomes for around 2,500 local residents.
"For me, earning 4,000 yuan a month means I can have a stable income without leaving home," Wang says.
"More importantly, I can tell our story to audiences and let more people know how east-west collaboration has changed ordinary people's lives."
Wang's personal transformation mirrors a broader historical shift. Figures show that the east-west collaboration has helped Ningxia eradicate absolute poverty, lifting 803,000 rural residents out of destitution.
Since 1996, Fujian has channeled 7.68 billion yuan in aid and guided more than 1,600 enterprises to invest in Ningxia, with actual investment exceeding 100 billion yuan.
Today, nearly 6,000 Fujian-based enterprises operate steadily in Ningxia, providing a solid foundation for the region's socioeconomic development, according to Wang Jian, head of Ningxia's regional department of agriculture and rural affairs.
In 2025, Ningxia's per capita GDP reached 78,000 yuan.
The relationship is also evolving from one-way assistance toward market-driven cooperation, with resources increasingly flowing in both directions.
Digital cooperation is one example. Ningxia's computing resources are meeting rising demand in Fujian while helping ease the province's energy constraints.
The partnership is turning Ningxia's resource advantages into new economic drivers while creating a new model for east-west digital cooperation.
China's east-west collaboration program is part of a broader national strategy to narrow regional development gaps and promote common prosperity.
Over years of experimentation, the program has developed a system encompassing joint coordination, paired assistance, financial support, exchanges of officials and professionals, and participation from businesses and wider society.
By bringing together capital and markets from the east with resources from the west, the initiative has helped build new industries and strengthen local economies.
For instance, a partnership between Jiangsu province and Shaanxi province has helped turn Ankang, a city in Shaanxi, into a "plush toy capital". More than 800 enterprises generate an annual output of 10 billion yuan and employ nearly 20,000 people.
Similarly, Guangdong province, an economic powerhouse, and less-developed Guizhou province have helped establish a "guitar capital" in Zheng'an county through a cross-regional model that combines design in Macao, manufacturing in Zheng'an and sales in Guangdong's Hengqin. Exports reached 248 million yuan in 2025.
Agricultural trade, meanwhile, has evolved from emergency charity sales to stable market integration, with Shanghai now hosting over 300 direct outlets for Yunnan's specialty products.
As a long-term institutional arrangement for coordinated regional development and common prosperity, east-west collaboration has evolved from a phased poverty alleviation measure into a stable mechanism for sustained cooperation.
China's 15th Five-Year Plan (2026-30), released this year, underscores the need to optimize east-west collaboration. As 2026 marks the first year of implementing regular assistance, the Chinese leadership urges drawing on the valuable experience gained from the Fujian-Ningxia partnership to further refine these mechanisms and broaden the scope of cooperation.
Maierdan Mugaiti, vice-minister of agriculture and rural affairs, says China will maintain the long-term pairing of eight eastern provincial-level areas with 10 western ones.
Economically developed eastern counties will also be paired with key western counties for rural vitalization, extending assistance to more communities.
In July, officials, experts and scholars from more than 50 countries visited Ningxia to explore Chinese modernization through local experiences of poverty alleviation.
For Ghulom Halimzoda, chairman of the Socialist Party of Tajikistan, the most valuable lesson from the trip was Ningxia's comprehensive institutional framework and mechanisms for socioeconomic development, which he said could offer lessons for Central Asian countries.
"The core inspiration that China's experience brings us is not simply that huge resources were invested. The continuity of policy, the governance capacity to coordinate and mobilize all forces, and, most crucially, the people-centered principle are what matter most," he says.
