From picking mushrooms near home to earning a stable income, rural communities in Ningxia are transforming their livelihoods through regional cooperation. In Jingyuan County, Guyuan City, villager Ma Xixia calculates her earnings while harvesting fungi at the Zhaoming Village mushroom park. Once reliant on unpredictable weather for farming, these mountain residents now have reliable income sources. Supported by the Fujian-Ningxia collaboration, the local mushroom industry has evolved from a single planting initiative into a full-fledged sector encompassing production, processing, and sales, becoming a "umbrella of prosperity" for the people.

Thousands of kilometers away in Beichuan, Sichuan, blueberry bushes are laden with ripe fruit. Just a few years ago, the local blueberry industry was still in its trial phase. Now, leveraging technology, markets, and industrial resources from east-west cooperation, blueberries have expanded from cultivation to processing, and from products to branding. A single mushroom or blueberry connects development resources across regions, reflecting new changes in regional collaborative support.

Since the comprehensive victory in the poverty alleviation campaign, forces including east-west cooperation, targeted assistance, village-based support, and social contributions have worked together. They have accelerated the flow of resources, industries, talent, and markets, driving continuous progress in rural revitalization efforts.

Complementary Advantages: Diverse Forces Build Rural Revitalization

Rural revitalization is a systematic project requiring participation from multiple fronts. Xiaocaoba, located in Yilian County, Zhaotong City, Yunnan Province, boasts a temperate and humid climate that enhances the accumulation of active ingredients like gastrodin and gastrodia polysaccharides in its unique Wutianma (Gastrodia elata). However, four years ago, local practitioners were stymied by inadequate strain selection systems, insufficient deep-processing capabilities for gastrodia products, incomplete industrial chains, and low added value for specialty items. In 2022, facilitated by the Shanghai-Yunnan collaboration, the Edible Fungi Research Institute of the Shanghai Academy of Agricultural Sciences established an expert workstation in Zhaotong, officially approved in 2023. Subsequently, researchers conducted three field surveys in Yilian and Daguan counties, collecting 22 wild Armillaria mellea samples, with two superior strains currently undergoing selective breeding trials in both Shanghai and Zhaotong.

Industrial transformation extends beyond strains. With support from the Shanghai-Yunnan collaboration, Shanghai provided crucial freeze-drying and extraction technology, producing water-soluble crystals of gastrodia's active ingredients. This innovation has moved gastrodia from a "medicinal herb" to a "food ingredient," spawning products like gastrodia wine, puree, noodles, and ground powder. Such changes exemplify the deepening of east-west cooperation. Data shows that during the transition period, eight eastern provinces and cities paired with ten western provinces and regions, investing over 115 billion yuan in fiscal aid, guiding corporate investments exceeding 750 billion yuan, helping more than 5 million rural laborers in the west find employment, facilitating agricultural product sales worth nearly 570 billion yuan, and enabling over 130,000 exchanges of officials and talent.

Meanwhile, targeted assistance has become more precise and empowering. In Jianhe County, Guizhou, forest-based Chinese herbal medicine has emerged as a new industrial growth point. Previously, the polygonatum industry struggled with reliance on imported seedlings and unstable planting returns. Now, a core polygonatum planting base has been established in Wumen Village, Censong Town. The Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs' support team addressed industry weaknesses by introducing experts in Chinese herbal medicine germplasm resources to conduct technical research, building standardized seedling bases, and promoting native polygonatum seedling cultivation. Through a "Party branch + cooperative + base + farmer" model, they have driven large-scale planting of over 800 mu (approximately 53 hectares) of polygonatum. As the industry expanded, the support team extended efforts further down the supply chain, leveraging research capabilities from the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences' Processing Institute to develop functional polygonatum foods and enhance product value. From "sending officials" to "bringing technology," and from "providing projects" to "cultivating industries," targeted assistance is helping grassroots areas build development capacity. During the transition period, 310 central units have provided targeted support to 610 former poverty-stricken counties, directly investing and facilitating over 370 billion yuan in assistance funds, and purchasing or helping sell over 210 billion yuan in agricultural products.

Empowering Industries: Transforming Resource Advantages into Development Drivers

The vitality of regional collaboration lies in fostering sustainable "self-generation" capabilities. In recent years, regions across China have innovatively launched three special initiatives: "collaborative support to boost consumption and employment, and assist in agricultural-cultural-tourism integration," aimed at improving the quality and efficiency of rural industries. At the apple seedling tissue culture and breeding center in Wumiao Village, Chengchuan Town, Jingning County, Gansu, tender green apple saplings are thriving. Previously, the local apple industry was constrained by an insufficient supply of high-quality seedlings. Through Tianjin-Gansu cooperation, a seedling breeding base was established. "Now we cultivate virus-free seedlings ourselves, which bear fruit in three years and reach full production in five," explains the technical lead, overcoming the bottleneck of seed source limitations. Today, a more comprehensive industrial chain is forming, from superior variety breeding to fruit processing and from production bases to sales markets. Deep-processed products like apple juice, apple cider vinegar, and freeze-dried chips are diversifying, ensuring that "not a single apple is wasted."

Industrial collaboration has also broadened employment channels for rural residents. At the Erke (鸿星尔克) factory in the Minning Industrial Park, Ningxia, Mu Yulin has ended years of migrant work to return home for a job. "It's close to home, the pay is decent, and the work suits me," he says. The Fujian-Ningxia collaboration has extended industrial projects to rural areas, bringing job opportunities closer to the people. Since Erke (Ningxia) Industrial Co., Ltd. was established, it has employed 380 people, many of whom are returning migrant workers and stay-at-home women. "We also provide free shuttle buses, accommodation, and canteens for employees, and run a care center for nearly 50 employees' children," says company head Li Yongjie. Phase one of the project, once fully operational, is expected to create 500 jobs, with an annual production capacity of 3 million units and an output value of 120 million yuan. Additionally, the company has opened the highest-specification brand store in Minning Town, adopting a "front store, back factory" model. "On one hand, this lets Minning Town residents experience quality products and services at lower costs. On the other hand, as tourism in Minning Town grows, factory tours combined with shopping could become a new path forward," Li adds.

From industrial collaboration to employment cooperation and consumption support, these three special initiatives are forming a mutually reinforcing virtuous cycle, giving rural industries greater confidence and ensuring more stable income growth for residents.

Regional Linkages: Collaborative Development Opens New Horizons

From one-to-one regional pairing to cross-regional industrial synergy, regional collaboration is moving from "filling gaps" to "promoting win-win outcomes," enabling different areas to achieve shared development through complementary advantages. In the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region, coordinated development in agriculture is rapidly converting comparative advantages into development strengths. Early morning at the Shunzhai Melon and Vegetable Cooperative in Guan County, Hebei, tasks like harvesting, sorting, and loading proceed seamlessly. Through cold-chain transport, fresh vegetables reach the Beijing market the same day, taking no more than 24 hours from field to table. "Beijing has the market, Hebei has the space"鈥攔elying on Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei coordinated development, a network of vegetable production bases around the capital has efficiently connected with urban consumer markets, securely filling Beijing's "vegetable basket" while boosting income for surrounding farmers.

Alongside the coordinated progress of the North China Plain's "vegetable basket," agricultural modernization on the Northeast black soil is demonstrating the deeper power of regional collaboration. The black soil is fundamental to grain production in the Northeast. The three northeastern provinces and eastern Inner Mongolia have explored a collaborative governance model combining "technology sharing and policy linkage." The "Lishu model," originating from Lishu County, Jilin, has been adopted on over 100 million mu (about 6.67 million hectares). Heilongjiang has integrated straw return with soil fertility improvement, Liaoning has built 18 pilot counties, and Inner Mongolia promotes differentiated technical models鈥攁ll aimed at protecting black soil while increasing grain output, solidifying the foundation of China's granary.

In July this year, the National Regional Collaborative Support Work Conference was held in Jiangkou County, Tongren City, Guizhou. The conference emphasized implementing normalized support arrangements, continuing east-west cooperation, deepening targeted assistance from central units, steadily advancing village-based support, innovating and expanding social contributions, and coordinating agricultural and rural regional development while supporting old revolutionary base areas, ethnic minority regions, border areas, and less-developed regions, to take regional collaborative support to a new level.

Though mountains and seas are vast, we walk together. From industrial co-construction to market sharing, from talent exchanges to regional synergy, cross-regional collaboration practices are painting a fresh picture of coordinated regional development.