On a drizzly fresh morning, Lu Panfeng, 45, was inspecting and recording the conditions of wheat in the city of Huai'an, east China's Jiangsu Province. Once utterly obscure, he was awarded as a national role model for efforts in poverty alleviation at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing last month.
During the past eight years, as the Party chief of Fengnian village in Huai'an, once a poverty-stricken village, Lu has worked out a busy schedule to lead his villagers out of abject deprivation by developing local agricultural collectives and distinctive industries.
In 2020, the collective incomes of the village notched up 1 million yuan (about 153,000 U.S. dollars), quadrupling that of two years ago.