In a remote town in eastern China, an enterprising grocer decided to turn to the internet to bridge the distance between the small town and the huge market outside.
She opened an online shop, selling not only her products but also connecting other villagers so that they too could access a much bigger market.
Her enterprise became an example of China's innovations for poverty alleviation with a video on her initiative being part of a two-day exhibition inaugurated at the United Nations (UN) headquarters Thursday.
The "Better Life, Dream Come True" exhibition, a China-sponsored event, showcased photographs, video clips and texts.
One photo showed the innovation used by a dairy farmer in north China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region. She has been milking her cows using a contraption that guides the milk through a pipeline into a storage tank. The simple yet effective method was funded by a microloan from the UN Development Programme.
Chinese financial institutions are also providing low-interest and interest-free loans for poverty alleviation. As of 2017, they had disbursed 533 billion yuan (80.5 billion U.S. dollars), which helped 11 million families.
UN Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed said China's contribution accounts for nearly 70 percent of the global efforts to eradicate poverty and the Chinese experience could be very helpful to lift the remaining people out of poverty.
Adikalie Foday Sumah, Sierra Leone's permanent representative to the UN, said poverty eradication is a common aspiration around the world.
Saying he is interested in how China advanced this cause and achieved such impressive results in just a few decades, the diplomat added that it is worth thinking how Sierra Leone can cooperate with China in poverty reduction.
China has demonstrated how to mobilize resources for poverty alleviation, Durga Prasad Bhattarai, Nepal's permanent representative to the UN, said, adding that China's experience is inspiring for Nepal.
Bhattarai said infrastructure is the primary precondition for poverty alleviation, and China's support for Nepal in this regard is commendable.
"We are very much looking forward to a wider range of cooperation with China," he said.
Eason Fan, an 11-year-old Chinese boy, became the focus of the inauguration willy-nilly.
The son of a correspondent covering the event, he had come with his father and the T-shirt he wore caught the eye of the UN deputy chief.
The T-shirt had a simple message: "Respect all, fear none."
"This should be the spirit of our poverty reduction efforts," Mohammed said.
