The sweet potato is a Xixiang agricultural product popular in Qidong. [Photo/ntfabu.com]

The county-level city of Qidong – administered by Nantong in East China's Jiangsu province – is acting to help out another region with the sale of its agricultural products.

Qidong established partnership in 2017 with Xixiang – a county administered by the prefecture-level city of Hanzhong in Northwest China's Shaanxi province – in the wake of the two provinces setting up a cooperative relationship earlier that year.

From that time, Qidong has undertaken multiple measures in a number of areas in order to help Xixiang get rid of its poverty, including encouraging the consumption of the latter's products. As a result, in the current year sales of agricultural products and special handicrafts from Xixiang topped 15 million yuan ($2.35 million).

Wang Wenqing, a resident of Nianzigou village in Xixiang, took a chance and established a cooperative to grow Chinese trichosanthes and other related products.

"This year, Qidong city has helped us sell more than 20,000 packages of Chinese trichosanthes fruit, worth 750,000 yuan," Wang said.

"We have determined that we need to establish a special window for marketing in Qidong next year to further expand the market."

In addition to encouraging consumption, Qidong also invested significant funds to support the development of agricultural and sideline products such as Chinese trichosanthes in Xixiang.

"Since 2018, we used 1.2 million yuan of the Jiangsu-Shaanxi cooperation fund to develop a Chinese trichosanthes planting base covering 42 hectares," said Hu Kui, Party secretary of Bailongtang town in the county.

"We also reconstructed 200-sq-m workshops, built a refrigeration house covering 200 sq m and bought processing equipment and other support facilities," Hu added.