BEIJING, April 18 (Xinhua) -- During an inspection tour to southwest China's Chongqing Municipality this week, President Xi Jinping called for greater efforts to win the battle against poverty and realize the goal of building "a moderately prosperous society in all respects" as scheduled.
As the deadline to eradicate absolute poverty approaches, the country is gathering strength to focus on the nation's poorest people, who mainly dwell in deep mountains with adverse natural environments and backward infrastructure, or have special needs.
It was China's solemn promise to let poor people and poor areas enter the moderately prosperous society together with the rest of the country, Xi said in a letter to the International Forum on Reform and Opening Up and Poverty Reduction in China, which was held in Beijing last November.
The country's poverty-reduction drive has been widely recognized as the largest such campaign in history, with UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres pointing out that China had contributed the most to world poverty alleviation in the past decade.
Here are some facts on poverty reduction in China.
PEOPLE FIRST
With the world's largest population, China has been boosting its economic development on one major theme: improving people's livelihoods. This has become a fundamental goal and a consistent priority in policy-making. A typical example is the development blueprint for building a moderately prosperous society.
-- Under that blueprint, China will eradicate absolute poverty by 2020 and double per capita income from 2010 level.
-- More than 700 million Chinese people have been lifted out of poverty over the past 40 years. The country's proportion of people living below the Chinese poverty line fell from 97.5 percent in 1978 to 3.1 percent among the rural population at the end of 2017.
--In the past six years, China lifted 82.39 million rural poor out of poverty, with the rural poor population down from 98.99 million in 2012 to 16.6 million in 2018.
-- By the end of 2018, more than half of the 832 poverty-stricken counties had escaped poverty.
-- Per capita income of Chinese people increased by nearly 25 times from 1978 to 2018. In 2018, per capita disposable income of rural residents in poverty-stricken areas stood at 10,371 yuan, a 10.6-percent year-on-year rise.
STRONG ROLE OF GOVERNMENT
With Xi Jinping in charge, China's poverty-relief battle has made decisive progress and provided global poverty relief with Chinese solutions.
--Last June, Xi presided over a meeting of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee to review a plan on efforts in poverty alleviation, stressing that the battle against poverty was one of the "three tough battles" that the country must win to build a moderately prosperous society.
--Last October, the CPC Central Committee arranged a new round of disciplinary inspections targeting poverty alleviation, the first of its kind, to intensify local governments' poverty-reduction efforts.
-- To wipe out absolute poverty, governments at all levels have established anti-poverty special departments or leading groups, increased poverty-reduction budgets and ensured eastern economically developed regions to help underdeveloped regions in central and western China.
-- State-owned enterprises (SOEs) have taken the lead to support the country's poverty relief campaign. Ninety-six centrally-administered SOEs have offered targeted support to 246 poverty-stricken counties, or 41.6 percent of the key counties under the national poverty-relief program. They have also set up poverty alleviation funds of 18.18 billion yuan (about 2.7 billion U.S. dollars) and invested 14 billion yuan in nearly 100 aid projects.
TARGETED APPROACH
China has adopted a targeted approach, which requires officials to identify actual impoverished people and the factors that caused their poverty.
-- A large legion of capable officials have been selected to guide poverty relief work. For example, officials with business savvy were sent to poverty-stricken villages, while officials with specialized industrial knowledge were sent to villages with an industrial base. As a result, each household or even family member has been given a bespoke poverty relief plan.
-- Apart from setting a multi-year timetable, China also targeted different policies to different regions, including developing business, relocating the poor, compensating farmers in ecologically fragile areas, encouraging education and improving social security.
-- The independent development of needy residents has been enhanced using areas including e-commerce, financing, tourism and infrastructure improvements.
-- During his inspection tour in Chongqing, Xi said that people who still live under the poverty line or slip back into poverty due to illness should be the priority of poverty alleviation projects, and should receive support such as minimum-living allowances, medical insurance and medical aid.
