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ZHANG Xiangyin still remembers the day his daughter-in-law left home three years ago, leaving her 33-day-old son. She could no longer bear living entrenched in poverty in their mountain village.

Zhang, a 58-year-old farmer in Bijie City of southwest China’s Guizhou Province, knows exactly what poverty means. With two daughters, who got married and moved away and his son in the coastal Shenzhen City as a migrant worker, the baby boy was left to the elderly couple. But two 11-month-old Simmental cows he bought with a 24,000-yuan (US$3,762) government loan this September are expected to change his fate.

“The cows will give birth soon and are likely to have four calves within three years, which would produce 40,000 yuan in revenue,” said Zhang.

After four years, Zhang expects between 20,000 to 30,000 yuan in net profits with newborn calves, which would lift him out of poverty.

In the past, Zhang was too poor to think of raising cows. A cow costs 12,000 yuan in the local market while Zhang’s annual income was just a tenth of that, relying on corn and potato crops.

The three-year interest-free loan is a new tactic for the Qixingguan District, which is home to 230,000 people living below the poverty line of 2,300 yuan in annual income by 2010 price standards, or 15 percent of its total population.

Industrial development is key for poor people to get out of poverty and funding is the bottleneck, said Gong Xiaonong, Party secretary of the district. “Even with government loans, some farmers are afraid they cannot pay them back if a natural disaster happens,” said Gong.

Gong visited several villages with researchers last year and concluded that the mortality rate of cows dying in natural disasters, including snowstorms and unavoidable accidents, was 4.7 percent. The district government then decided to buy a 30 million yuan financial product from the local rural commercial bank with a return of 8 percent in three years, capable of compensating farmers who lost their cows in natural disasters.

“With government guarantees and support from veterinarians, I am confident I will bid farewell to poverty in three years,” said Zhang, whose latest dream is to support the schooling of his grandson who will turn 6 in 2018.

So far, 8,800 households have applied for the cow-breeding loans and more than 100 million yuan loans have been given to poverty-stricken farmers since the project was introduced in August.

The loans, ranging from 5,000 to 24,000 yuan, will also expand to other businesses, including potato and vegetable planting as well as chicken breeding.

The trial in Bijie epitomizes China’s grand poverty eradication campaign.

China has vowed to lift all of its people out of poverty by 2020, when its next Five-year Plan is completed. At the end of last year, China still had 70.17 million people in the countryside living below the poverty line. By 2020, China plans to lift 50 million people out of poverty with support from industries.