Since the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC) in 2012, the CPC Central Committee has given the utmost importance to poverty alleviation work in its governance of the country. It has mobilized the whole Party and society to fight against poverty.

Sending first secretaries to poverty-stricken areas is one of the core strategies in poverty alleviation proposed by General Secretary of the CPC Central Committee Xi Jinping, and also a dynamic practice of targeted poverty alleviation measures with Chinese characteristics.

Since 2015, China has selected outstanding young officials, as well as outstanding personnel from state-owned enterprises and public institutions to go to villages and lead the fight against poverty. They are referred to as "first secretaries."

Before this, some provincial-level regions and government departments had sent outstanding officials to villages to assist in poverty alleviation, and achieved noticeable results and accumulated valuable experience.

From 2015 to 2019, a total of 459,000 party members had been selected across China as the first Party secretaries, with 230,000 of them on active duty. They have helped poverty alleviation efforts in all registered poverty-stricken villages and all those with weak and lax Party organizations.

In order to put into practice Xi Jinping's thinking on targeted poverty alleviation, the organs of the CPC Central Committee and the State Council have taken the lead in selecting first secretaries.

Take the International Department of the CPC Central Committee as an example. Over the past five years, it has dispatched three officials to serve as first secretaries in Xingtang county, Hebei province, each serving a term of two years.

Although they have worked in different villages at different stages of poverty alleviation, they share the same goal. Their poverty alleviation experiences can be depicted in three chapters: "tackling hardship", "leaping forward" and "seeking a new horizon."