How Xi helps transform northwest China's barren land

Twenty-four years ago, villager Huang Tongshuai had the opportunity of seeing the man who would change his life.

"In 1997, I was only 11. I saw a group of adults talking around a well in the village, and then I saw him," recalled Huang, who lives in an area called Xihaigu in northwest China's Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region.

Huang was talking about Chinese President #XiJinping, also general secretary of the Communist Party of China (#CPC) Central Committee and chairman of the Central Military Commission. He has visited Xihaigu four times over the past 25 years, which proved pivotal to the transformation of the area once deemed unfit for settlement by UN experts.

Xi lived and worked in Liangjiahe Village in northwest China's Shaanxi Province from 1969 to 1975. Still, when he arrived in Xihaigu, he could not believe what he saw.

"I have seen and lived in poor places, but in the 1990s, seeing that there were still poor places like this in China was shocking," Xi said.

The poverty-alleviation measures promoted by Xi have changed the fate of countless people in Xihaigu. Over the past 40 years, around 1.23 million people from Xihaigu have been relocated to more hospitable areas, and a greener and more prosperous Xihaigu began to take shape.

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