Connecting to prosperity

With the improved accessibility and implementation of other antipoverty strategies, Guizhou has been transformed from a region with the deepest poverty and the largest number of impoverished people in China into a region in which all counties have been lifted out of poverty, and extreme poverty has been eradicated.

Bridges have turned the once-isolated province into a gateway to Southwest China, boosting the flow of people, tourism and investments and driving economic growth.

Guizhou has seen significant improvements in other transportation infrastructure as well during the past decade. The province managed to connect all its counties with expressways by 2015. Two years later, it took the lead in western China in bringing paved roads and public transit to all villages.

Guizhou is also known as the "museum of world bridges", thanks to more than 20,000 bridges across the province, according to Xinhua News Agency.

By official count, 251 high bridges have been built in Guizhou since 2000 as part of a road network among mountains in the province.

During his fact-finding trip to Guizhou in 2015, President Xi Jinping wanted to learn how poverty reduction projects were being run. He urged the government of Guizhou to pursue economic development through innovation and improve people's livelihoods.

In 2021, Xi visited Guizhou again. By choosing the province, home to the last nine counties removed from the country's poverty list, he wanted to see in person the living conditions of those who had shaken off poverty, and to promote steady progress in rural vitalization.

As Xi has said, being lifted out of poverty is not an end in itself, but the starting point of a new life and a new pursuit.

As China has gained a decisive victory in ending absolute poverty, the focus of work concerning agriculture, rural areas and farmers has shifted to promoting rural vitalization.

In order to revitalize its mountainous areas, Guizhou is continuing to build bridges.

Above the grand canyon of southwest Guizhou's Huajiang River, which features towering cliffs and fast-flowing currents, a steel-truss girder suspension bridge is under construction.

With a height of 625 meters from the bridge deck to the water's surface, the bridge is expected to become the highest in the world after completion in 2025. It will cut the travel time across the canyon from about an hour to a mere one minute, according to Xinhua.

Xu Xianghua, the chief engineer of the Guizhou provincial department of transportation, said the bridges have allowed the leapfrogging of transportation development in the mountainous province and will serve as paths to prosperity.

Cai Hong contributed to this story.