Deputies to the Ninth National People's Congress (NPC) have urged the Chinese government to draft a long-term plan for poverty relief after basically meeting the objective of helping its 800 million needy rural population out of poverty by the end of this year.

The deputies, mostly from the western part of China, did this while attending the on-going the third NPC session in Beijing.

Most of the remaining poverty-stricken people are living in remote mountainous areas and regions with adverse conditions in southwest and northwest China. Experts agree that it calls for long-term and arduous work to provide sufficient food and clothing for these needy people.

Yunnan, a province in southwest China mainly inhabited by ethnic minorities, has pledged to invest approximately three billion yuan (about 362.5 million US dollars) in the next seven years to relocate a total of 500,000 ethnic minority locals in dire poverty, according to provincial governor Li Jiating.

Yunnan is firmly resolved to cope with the poverty problem through such means as relocation, education, science and technology, the governor said.

For those scattered in secluded mountainous areas with natural environment unfit for living, the only way out is to relocate and settle them down elsewhere, he added.

Yunnan has a poor population of 7.2 million in 1993, which was reduced to 2.45 million at the end of 1999.

Ma Qizhi, chairman of Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region in northwest China, said Ningxia will continue its poverty-relief efforts after it attains the goal of ensuring basic living necessities for the needy. "For those poor people relocated from the southern mountainous areas, Ningxia will strive to lift them out of poverty in five years and get rich in another five years," Ma pledged.

Yang Caishou, an official in charge of poverty alleviation in Guangxi, an autonomous region in south China, said Guangxi attained its initial goal for eliminating abject poverty last year and will focus its future efforts on reducing poverty through ecological development and education so as to ensure sustainable economic growth in such areas.

China started to implement an ambitious poverty-relief program in 1994, pledging to help its 80 million needy population in rural areas out of poverty in eight years. The needy rural population had since dropped to 34 million by the end of last year, accounting for about 4.3 percent of the total rural population.