"Using education as a way to alleviate poverty, Diqing took the lead in implementing 14 years of free education from kindergarten to senior high school,” said Qi Jianxin, governor of Diqing Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture.

Qi said this on July 17 during a joint interview by Xinhua Net and the Yunnan office of cyberspace affairs, and topics at the interview focused on changes in the Tibetan prefecture over the past 70 years.

When it came to the nine-year compulsory education, the governor added none of the school-age children from the extremely impoverished households dropped out due to poverty.

Qi also briefed the prefecture’s progress in economy, infrastructure, ecology and social services. The total GDP of Diqing has increased from 13.3 million yuan in 1950 to 21.7 billion yuan in 2018, an increase of 1,632 times. The growth rate ranked first among the 10 Tibetan autonomous prefectures in China.

Source: Yunnan Net; trans-editing by Wang Shixue