China Issues White Paper on Poverty Reduction in Rural Areas

The Information Office of the State Council issued Monday a white paper on China's Aid-the-Poor Program, elaborating development of the Program since late 1970s and its future prospect.

The white paper, entitled "The Development-oriented Poverty Reduction Program for Rural China", says for quite a long period of time in the past, China, the world's largest developing country, was bedeviled by poverty due to various reasons.

The Chinese government has implemented nationwide a large-scale program for development-oriented poverty relief in a systematic way, since the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949, and in particular since the reform and opening-up drive started in the late 1970s.

The 20,000-word white paper elaborates in five parts the course and achievements of the Aid-the-Poor program, policy guarantee for the Program, major contents and channels of the Program, special focus on special groups among the impoverished, and the aid-the- poor program in the early period of the 21st century.

Thanks to the unremitting efforts the Chinese government has made over the past two decades, the number of poor people in rural areas who have problems in obtaining sufficient food and clothing decreased to 30 million in 2000 from 250 million in 1978. The impoverishment rate there decreased to around three percent from 30.7 percent.

China therefore has basically realized the strategic objective which enables all poverty-stricken people in rural areas to have enough to eat and wear by the end of the 20th century.

The Chinese government has formulated a policy for development- oriented poverty alleviation that conforms to the country's reality in order to solve problems such as weak infrastructure in the poverty-stricken areas, the imbalance between a fast growing population and the low level of education, public health and other basic social services, poor agricultural production conditions, and low revenue.

The government has fixed a realistic standard defining impoverishment, identified key poverty-stricken counties which would be aided by the State, and gave more emphasis to the central and western regions which are relatively less developed.

Over the past year, China has started to carry out the strategy of large-scale development of the western region to accelerate its growth and narrow down the regional gap in development.

The white paper says that the Chinese government has continually increased capital input for poverty reduction over the past 20 years. The special aid-the-poor funds pooled by the Chinese government has amounted to more than 168 billion yuan (20. 24 billion U.S. dollars).

The government also mapped out preferential policies to support the development of the poor areas and farmer households, including tax reduction or exemption, and gradually strengthening the financial transfer payments to poor areas by the central government.

Besides, the Chinese government has paid much attention to the role of grassroots leadership by promoting direct election of the village head by farmers, in order to enhance farmers' initiative and help them to bear an active part in the poverty elimination drive.

Providing development-oriented aid to the poor is a reform of and adjustment to the traditional way of dispersed relief. The Chinese government adheres to the policy of development-oriented aid which centers efforts on economic construction, supporting and encouraging people in poor areas to improve their production conditions, exploit local resources, promote commercial activities, and make themselves more capable of self-development.

The white paper says since the beginning of the 1990s, China has attached more importance to bringing aid within the reach of individual villages and households.

Officials at various level have been organized to form "one helps one family" team. Businesses are encouraged to set farm products production and processing bases to help increase farmers' income. Poor farmers, if voluntarily, are able to move to other places with better conditions and shake off poverty through relocation. All social sectors are motivated to aid poor rural households.

Meanwhile, the Chinese government has also learnt experiences of other countries and international organizations in helping the poor. Providing poor households with small-amount credit loans is proved to be successful in China. By the year 1999, a total of 3 billion yuan (361.4 million U.S. dollars) had been loaned to over 2.4 million poor rural households.

The Chinese government has utilized science, technology and education as effective aid-the-poor means. To further enhance the ability of poor areas to fight poverty, the Chinese government has provided special funds for conducting technological training, and introducing, testing, demonstrating and promoting improved seed strains and advanced practical technologies. The National Project of Compulsory Education in Poor Areas, initiated in 1995, has helped poor areas institute nine-year compulsory education with more than 10 billion yuan (1.2 billion U.S. dollars).

The white papers says China has adopted the idea of getting the more developed provinces and municipalities in the eastern part of the country to support the development of their counterparts in the western part.

The scheme is carried out as 5,745 project agreements have been signed with 28 billion yuan (3.4 billion U.S. dollars) of contracted investment in total. Of which 4 billion yuan has been invested in the west.

The east also helped build or re-build 1,400 primary and middle schools in the west. Nearly 40,000 dropouts received financial aid and were able to return to school.

The Chinese government has actively studied the international anti-poverty experience and explored cooperation with international organizations in aiding the poor since 1990s.

World Bank, China's first international partner in fighting poverty, has made the largest investment so far. The aid-the-poor project jointly carried out by the World Bank and the Chinese government in southwest China has involved a total of 610 million U.S. dollars, benefiting more than 8 million people from nine provinces and autonomous regions.

The white paper says ethnic minorities, the disabled and women are special groups among China's impoverished rural population. The Chinese government pays great attention to poverty alleviation work for these special groups, adopting effective measures to help them get rid of poverty together with other impoverished people.

The white paper says from 1994 to 2000, 38.4 percent of the nation's total investment, or 43.253 billion yuan (5.23 billion U.S. dollars), flowed to the Inner Mongolia, Guangxi, Tibet, Ningxia, Xinjiang autonomous regions, and Guizhou, Yunnan and Qinghai provinces with large ethnic minority populations.

Statistics show that the impoverished populations in the above mentioned nine administrative regions declined from 20.86 million in 1995 to 11.85 million in 1999, a decrease of 9.01 million over four years.

The impoverishment rate declined from 15.6 percent in 1995 to 8. 7 percent in 1999, a decrease of 6.9 percentage points.

In the 232 poverty-stricken counties included in the State's priority aid in the nine administrative regions, farmers' net income per capita increased from 630 yuan (76 U.S. dollars) in 1995 to 1,189 yuan (143 U.S. dollars) in 1998, up by 88.7 percent.

As a result, the situation of long-standing poverty in the rural and pastoral areas of Tibet has changed radically as the impoverished population in the region dropped to today's 70,000 from 480,000 in the early 1990s.

The white paper says currently China has over 60 million disabled people. Of them, 80 percent live in the rural areas and a large number of them live in poverty due to disability and other external reasons.

The Chinese government has made poverty alleviation for the disabled an important part of the State's poverty alleviation program. In 1992, the government established a special rehabilitation and poverty alleviation loan to aid the impoverished disabled.

The government also strengthened building of the poverty alleviation service system at the grassroots level to offer prompt and effective service for the rural disabled.

Ten million disabled people have solved the problem of food and clothing over the past decade, leaving 9.79 million still beset by this problem by the end of 2000.

The white paper says the Chinese government has paid great attention to helping rural women shake off poverty. The All-China Women's Federation, the largest women's organization in China, has helped 3.47 million poor women out of poverty and get rich by providing poverty alleviation services, conducting cultural and technological training, facilitating small-amount credit loans, organizing labor service transfer, and initiating poverty alleviation projects specially designed for women.

The white paper notes that alleviating and eliminating poverty remains a long-term historical task for China. The development- oriented poverty alleviation drive in rural China in early 21st century faces both historical opportunity and serious challenges and problems.

What has been achieved in the past two decades, the sustained economic growth in the future, the economic restructuring, go-west strategy, and a more open China will bring new opportunities for the development of the poverty-stricken areas in China.

The major difficulties and problems for China in the early 21st century include the low standard for poverty relief; people who have shaken off poverty are easy to sink back into poverty due to unfavorable natural conditions, weak social security system and their poor capability; the employment pressure brought by China's huge population is bound to affect the impoverished people's employment, making some effective aid-the-poor measures no longer work well.

The white paper says that the Chinese government will continue to take the first to be helped those in poverty-stricken areas who still do not have enough to eat and wear.

From 2001 to 2010, the Chinese government will concentrate its poverty alleviation efforts on the ethnic minority areas, old revolutionary base areas, border areas and destitute areas in the central and western regions.

Some counties will be designated for special help. The government will use its financial, material and human resources in a concentrated way in the comparatively concentrated poor areas.

China's comprehensive poverty alleviation goal from 2001 to 2010 is to help the small number of needy people without enough to eat and wear attain that minimum standard of living as soon as possible, and further improve the basic production and living conditions of the poor areas and consolidate the results gained in this regard.

At the same time, the quality of life and comprehensive quality of the poverty-stricken people shall be improved, and construction of infrastructure facilities shall be speeded up in impoverished rural areas.

In addition, their eco-environment will be improved, and their social, economic and cultural backwardness changed, so as to create the conditions for a future comfortable life.

The white paper notes at the end that China is a developing country, and it has a long way to go to shake off poverty. The basic solution of the problem of food and clothing of the poverty- stricken population in rural areas is only the result of one phase in our effort to accomplish this historic task.

It will still take a long period of hard work to enable the people in the poor areas to first live a comfortable life and then a well-off life.






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