Currently, the focus of “agriculture, rural areas, and farmers” is shifting towards promoting comprehensive rural revitalization and modernization of agriculture and rural areas. The essence of rural revitalization lies in the development of industrial revitalization, and its shortcomings still lie in underdeveloped areas. How to promote the development of the primary industry based on characteristic agriculture in these regions has become a focus of attention from all sectors of society.

Based on the county-level panel data from 2004 to 2019, this paper uses the continuous DID method to empirically analyze the policy effects and mechanisms of inter-provincial paired assistance on agricultural development in border ethnic areas.

The study finds that: First, paired assistance significantly promotes agricultural development in recipient areas, providing guarantees for the sustainable development of local agriculture and rural revitalization. Second, in terms of basic production conditions, paired assistance improves the level of hardware infrastructure and agricultural mechanization; in terms of large-scale production in agricultural industry, paired assistance promotes the output of local characteristic agriculture and animal husbandry industries; in terms of informatization of agricultural product sales, paired assistance improves the degree of telephone, Internet, post and telecommunications networking, and e-commerce development in recipient areas, and the market accessibility of agricultural product sales. Third, initial economic conditions and comparative advantages are the two key factors that affect the effectiveness of paired assistance.

The contributions of this paper are that: First, it provides new academic achievements for the research field on evaluating the effectiveness of China’s poverty alleviation. Second, it expands relevant research from the perspectives of industrial revitalization in underdeveloped areas and the development of agricultural new quality productive forces. Third, it provides ideas for the modernization and sustainable development of agriculture in underdeveloped areas, and has enlightening significance for exploring effective paths to achieve rural industrial revitalization.