“Poverty alleviation is a globally recognized and accepted issue. This is the first time I am visiting such a remote countryside and seeing for myself China’s progress in poverty alleviation. I am now very much willing to tell more people the story of poverty alleviation in China. I’m also going to bring the Chinese experience back to my country,” Gala Juan Carlos, a 24-year-old student from Cuba, said on June 2, while sharing with his classmates his experience visiting Jinhua’s poverty alleviation area. “Such an event is very meaningful. I’m going to show my family the videos I made today.”

Juan Carlos was talking about the first offline event of the Extracurricular Events on National Policy Education (EE project) organized by Jinhua Foreign Affairs Office and Zhejiang Normal University. On the occasion, 29 international students from 18 countries attended.

As General Secretary Xi Jinping emphasized, it is a crucial task to improve China’s capacity for engaging in international communication so as to tell China’s stories well, present a true, multi-dimensional, and panoramic view of China.

In order to further make Jinhua an “open and strong city” and take the lead in telling China’s stories, the EE project provides internationals based in Jinhua with a panoramic, multi-dimensional, and true platform to understand Jinhua and China’s national conditions.

The event took place in Wuyi County and was themed “alleviating the poverty of the mountain.” Through visits to local institutions and projects, international students based in Jinhua experienced a full immersion into the practice and initiatives launched by the Party in the last 40 years in terms of poverty alleviation in remote areas. On the occasion, participants walked around and listened to explanations that left them amazed. Most of the students marveled at the effectiveness of the local policies to alleviate poverty.

“All this has demolished my previous stereotype of Chinese farmers of remote areas struggling with poverty and livelihood. I’m amazed at seeing how China has got out of poverty and become prosperous so rapidly,” US student Leng Yutian said.

According to partial statistics, more than 11,000 internationals are based in Jinhua, accounting for one-fourth of the number of internationals in Zhejiang. And over 2800 are international students at ZNU. They are very interested in Chinese culture and full of curiosity and yearning for China's development path.

In addition to the theme of poverty alleviation, China’s national conditions education second classroom project will focus on creating a series of events for internationals and Hong Kong and Macao residents to learn more about the reforms and development, which will eventually lead to a number of good stories about Jinhua and China. (Text by Wang Fei, photo by Zhong Lu, translated by Marco Lovisetto, edited by Mariam Ayad)