On August 6, Shaohua City held a citywide conference of leading officials in the auditorium of the Municipal Party Committee's Party School.
Sima Yanan, Municipal Party Secretary and director of the People's Congress; Mayor Zhou Yi; municipal CPPCC Chairman Wu Jili; members of the Four Leading Bodies; heads of municipal departments; leaders of the counties, county-level cities, and districts; and current and retired department-level officials all attended the conference.
At the conference, Sima Yanan unequivocally laid out the principal tasks and goals of Shaohua City's future development plans: to lead the entire city's people in an all-out battle against poverty.
She stressed that they must actively implement national poverty alleviation policies, prioritize impoverished villages, and introduce a new development model centered on lifting entire villages out of poverty, with industry-based poverty alleviation and training to help workers find employment elsewhere as its "two wings."
As the person steering a city's development, a Municipal Party Secretary's foremost responsibility was to oversee socioeconomic goals, strategies, plans, and policies that affected the big picture and the long term.
This was one of the clearest distinctions between that role and the mayor's, which focused on the specifics of urban construction and economic development.
Of course, this did not mean the Municipal Party Secretary dealt only in theory rather than practical work. Rather, because her partner was Zhou Yi, Secretary Sima had not only put away the Iron Lady approach she had taken in her confrontations with Shan Wenxu, but offered Zhou Yi greater support and understanding. They shared the same goals, pulled in the same direction, and worked together, doing everything they could to get the job done!
Below the stage, hundreds of officials sat in a dense crowd, their eyes fixed on the dais.
That year, Shaohua had broken two records in succession,