Fifty-year-old farmer Su Haiying from Gansu province in Northwest China never imagined that one day she would become a brewer and support her family through an opportunity brought by a city located thousands of kilometers away in the east of China.

Su's hometown, Yuangudui village in Tianjiahe town, Dingxi, stands at an altitude of 2,400 meters above sea level. In the past, farming in this area was entirely dependent on weather conditions, yielding crops only in good years and facing losses in times of natural disasters.

The situation changed in November last year when a company from Qingdao city in Shandong province signed a contract with the village to establish a local craft beer project with an investment of over 1 million yuan ($140,000) in equipment, aiming to boost local tourism development.

As one of the local villagers participating in the project, Su cleans the equipment carefully before starting each day's work. When encountering difficulties in operation, she calls her "teachers" in Qingdao for advice. "I am very grateful to these people from Qingdao who help us. Their encouragement, support and assistance mean a lot to me," she said.

The brewery project is part of the collaboration between Qingdao and the Gansu cities of Longnan and Dingxi under the country's East-West coordination mechanism, a crucial strategy first initiated in the 1990s that aims to eradicate nationwide poverty and enhance people's livelihoods through cooperation between the prosperous eastern regions and the impoverished western regions.

Since 2016, more than 100 officials from Qingdao have been dispatched to the two Gansu cities, along with more than 2,700 professionals in education, medical care and agricultural technologies to assist local development. By May this year, Qingdao had provided training programs to more than 26,000 local residents in Gansu, and introduced 320 industrial projects with actual secured investment totaling 5.94 billion yuan.

With Qingdao's assistance, Yuangudui village has seen significant infrastructure improvements, including the replacement of dirt roads with 13.5 kilometers of asphalt roads and 23.89 km of paved pathways. Every household now has access to tap water, with 4G or 5G networks covering the entire area.

In 2018, the village declared itself free from poverty, setting a recognized model for poverty reduction globally and earning itself the designation of a national 4A-level scenic area. The average annual net income of villagers reached 18,860 yuan per person, nearly 13 times higher than in 2012. With the support and assistance of Qingdao's Shangma subdistrict, Xiaochuan town in Longnan has seen continuous improvements in infrastructure, industries and livelihoods of local residents. The township's Xixia village alone has so far attracted investment of 4 million yuan under the framework of the East-West coordination mechanism.

To create business opportunities, professionals from Qingdao are tapping into local resources.

Xixia, well known for its cherries since the 1980s, has an expanding cultivation area of around 110 hectares. In 2022, the village received an investment of 525,000 yuan from Qingdao to enhance the quality of the cherries. "Besides money, we also get valuable help from experts of the Shandong Academy of Agricultural Sciences," said Gao Feng, Party secretary of Xiaochuan. "Traditional cherry species are no longer popular in the market. Thanks to the technical and capital support from the East-West coordination mechanism, we are now growing new species which sell out as soon as they hit the market in late May every year."

Wudu district in Longnan stands as China's largest olive cultivation area. To explore the rich resources, officials from Qingdao have introduced an investment of 43 million yuan to establish a modern agro-industry park spanning 20 hectares. Within Wudu, eight projects focused on the olive industry have been launched, with a combined investment totaling 287 million yuan.

Bai Wanming, general manager of a local biotech company, said they have introduced advanced technology from Qingdao so that the olive residues and leaves formerly regarded as waste can now be fully utilized to increase added value and thus raise income for the growers.

Effective East-West cooperation means sincere, two-way, targeted and sustainable collaboration, said Ma Xiaohui, member of the Party Leadership Group of Dingxi Municipal People's Government and leader of the second batch of officials dispatched from Qingdao to Dingxi. "It is essential to leverage local resources and strengths of both sides and broadly mobilize support from all sectors of society to drive high-quality East-West cooperation," Ma said.