Poverty relief in China

[Billy]

Destitution is still one of the biggest challenges that China faces despite great achievements made by the country in social and economic development in the past 20 years, during which more than 220 million people were lifted out of extreme poverty.

To cope with the issue, the Chineses government has decided to begin a number of action plans on poverty reduction and development in the first 10 year of the new century to help raise up the nation's 30 million people still living below the poverty line, an annual income of about 650 yuan (US$78) per capita.

The key tasks of poverty reduction in the new era is summarised as follows:

1. Helping the poor who are still inadequately fed and clothed to resolve their feeding and clothing problems;

2. Helping the poor who have tentatively resolved feeding and clothing problems to further improve their production and living conditions, consolidate the achievements already made and improve their quality of life and general qualifications;

3. Intensify infrastructure construction in poor rural areas, improve eco-environment and gradually reverse social, economic and cultural backwardness of the poor communities so as to create a prosperous economic climate.

Priorities on poverty reduction in the new era include:

1. In consideration of the current distribution and characteristics of the rural poor population in China, the focus of national support will be on the ethnic minority areas, old revolutionary bases, border areas and various destitute areas in central and western China.

2.A list of counties with heavy poverty reduction tasks will be selected from the above four categories as the key poverty reduction counties based on the principle of clustering of poor populations and continuous poverty blocks, while also taking into account factors such asaverage farmers' income level, percentage of population affected by poverty and basic production and living conditions.

3. The central government will give special support to the counties chosen by the above standards. Poverty reduction funds from the central government will be mainly used for poverty reduction work in these key counties and for the poor rural areas in these key counties. Meanwhile further support will be given to poor rural areas in other counties in the above four categories of poor regions in central and western China.

4.In light of the fact that eastern provinces are relatively better developed economically, these provinces should develop their own strategies to reduce poverty .

Key poverty reduction policies in the new era include:

1. Support poor areas to develop agriculture and animal husbandry based on market needsin combination with general economic restructuring to generate increased income for the poor;

2. Further upgrade production and living conditions of poor regions, intensify construction of rural infrastructure and eco-environment;

3. Develop science and technology, education, culture and health to facilitate the all-around social progress of poor regions;

4. Further expand poverty reduction funds and improve use efficiency of poverty reduction funds;

5. Call on all members of the Chinese nation to participate in the reduction of poverty and consequently the strengthening of the country. Such involvement could include partnership between government administrations and poor regions to support their development initiative, as well as assistance by the more developed eastern provinces to the less developed western provinces in an east-west poverty reduction collaboration.