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1223As an important carrier for the coordinated development of targeted poverty alleviation and rural revitalization, entrepreneurial activities have received widespread attention from scholars. However, insufficient attention has been paid to the poverty alleviation effect of entrepreneurship and the construction of entrepreneurial ecosystem in impoverished areas. Scholars explored the mechanism of enhancing entrepreneurial vitality in impoverished areas from the perspective of entrepreneurial ecosystem, but they overlooked that in the socialist institutional environment with Chinese characteristics, grassroots Party members are important subjects in the entrepreneurial ecosystem.
This paper uses survey data from 832 impoverished counties in China to examine the impact of entrepreneurship on poverty alleviation in impoverished areas, as well as the important role of grassroots Party member construction in rural entrepreneurial ecosystem. The findings show that: First, entrepreneurship does increase the household income in impoverished areas and help realize poverty alleviation, indicating that entrepreneurship is an effective means to alleviate poverty and achieve common prosperity in impoverished areas. Second, the construction of grassroots Party members in the entrepreneurial ecosystem will enhance the poverty alleviation effect of entrepreneurship in impoverished areas. The construction of “red” fortresses helps to play a vanguard and exemplary role in policy publicity, wealth guidance, and ideological guidance of poverty alleviation, thus enhancing the poverty alleviation effect of entrepreneurship in impoverished areas. Third, the existence of destructive forces will weaken the poverty alleviation effect of entrepreneurship by stealing the fruits of entrepreneurship and cracking down on people’s entrepreneurial intentions, while the construction of grassroots Party members is an effective mechanism to counter the evil forces.
This paper has the following contributions: First, it examines the poverty alleviation effect of entrepreneurship in impoverished areas under the socialist system with Chinese characteristics, which helps to provide Chinese poverty alleviation experience to other countries. Second, it explores the positive effect of the “red” fortress construction on increasing entrepreneurial income and reducing poverty in impoverished areas, which not only deepens the theoretical foundation of promoting local governance system through the construction of grassroots Party members, but also enriches the research scope of entrepreneurial ecosystem theory. Third, it proposes the negative effect of rural destructive forces, and argues that the construction of grassroots Party members will curb the negative effect, which deepens the theoretical foundation for purifying the entrepreneurial ecosystem through the construction of grassroots Party members.
