Jiang Calls for Greater Poverty-Relief Efforts
President Jiang Zemin called on the whole nation to step up their efforts to basically resolve the problem of food and clothing for the country's needy in rural areas by the year 2000.
"The poverty-relief work has reached a crucial stage, so we must mobilize the forces of the whole Communist Party of China ( CPC) and society to take concrete steps to ensure we reach the strategic target by 2000," Jiang told a conference on the topic in Beijing on June 9.
Since the founding of New China in 1949, the CPC and the Chinese government have always given priority to solving the problem of food and clothing for the poor people, whose number has decreased by 10 million annually on the average over the past 20 years, he said.
By the end of 1998, the impoverished population in the rural areas dropped to 42 million from 250 million in 1978. Moreover, they only accounted for 4.6 percent of the total rural population compared with 30.7 percent in 1978.
"This is a miracle not only in Chinese history but also in world history," he said.
The great achievement in our poverty-relief efforts has proved that China's socialist system is the fundamental guarantee for the elimination of poverty, and the road of building socialism with Chinese characteristics is the only way leading to a rich and strong country, he noted.
Under the leadership of the Party and the central government, the whole society has been mobilized and organized to allocate huge amounts of funds for poverty alleviation, which is unique in the world, Jiang said.
Over the past 20 years, the impoverished population has been decreasing by an annual average of 10 million in China, in contrast to the worsening situation in many other countries and regions, he said.
Jiang said that the achievement has also shown the world that the CPC and the Chinese government have always attached great importance to promoting human rights in China, and have made strenuous efforts to safeguard the rights of subsistence and development of the Chinese people, which are the most important rights of all.
As China has the largest population in the world, it is the most elementary work for the country to safeguard the rights of subsistence and development, he said, adding that China's success in providing adequate food and clothing to millions of people who used to live in poverty is a major contribution to the world's development of human rights.
Jiang described the unprecedented poverty alleviation drive in China as having powerfully facilitated the coordinated development of the national economy and social stability.
Noting that many of the poverty-stricken areas used to be located in the ethnic minority and border areas, Jiang said that it is very important to ensure the stable development of those areas, which will have a major impact on national unity.
He said that China has registered rapid economic growth in ethnic minority and border areas in the past few years, with the living standards of the local people improving markedly and major changes taking place in social development.
The remarkable progress and experience China has gained in its poverty-alleviation drive embody the great spirit of self-reliance and hard work of the Chinese people, which should be further promoted to encourage the people to work even harder in the socialist modernization drive, Jiang said.
"It is the solemn commitment of the Party and the central government to the entire people to basically solve the food and clothing problem facing the impoverished population in rural areas by the year 2000," Jiang said.
"We must work hard to realize this goal, and we have every favorable condition to do this," he stressed.
China still has 42 million poor people in rural areas, including some 20 million handicapped people and those in abject poverty who lack fundamental living conditions, Jiang noted, adding that it will be no easy job to bring 10 million poor people out of poverty every year over the next two years.
"Poverty relief and development have reached the most difficult stage," Jiang said. "However, the whole Party and the nation must work together with one mind to tackle the problem."
What the poor population in rural areas worry about most is sufficient food and clothing. The next thing they are concerned about is a better-off life. So the Party should spare no effort to help the poor people realize their aspirations, Jiang said.
Chairman Mao Zedong once called on the Party to give priority to people's clothing, food, housing, chief daily necessities, medicare and marriages, Jiang recalled, pointing to the political importance of Party members being organizers of people's daily life.
"Some of the remaining poor population live in old revolutionary base areas, and during the war-time period, they contributed greatly to the Party and people's cause. Officials at all levels should feel remorse that they still lead poverty-stricken lives," Jiang said, noting that any failure to provide sufficient food and clothing for those people would make it hard to justify ourselves to the martyrs, the people and history.
As a developing socialist country, China will never rely on others for construction at any time, and must consistently adhere to the policy of independence and self-reliance, he said, but called for bold efforts to use foreign capital and technology.
"Rural markets are far from developed, and the reason is that most farmers earn low incomes. So, domestic demand will be greatly stimulated if their incomes and consumption are raised," he said. He called for greater poverty relief efforts in the relatively impoverished central and western areas, as more than 200 million people live there.
Unswerving efforts should be made to do a good job of poverty relief, in a bid to maintain the hard-won situation of reform, development, and stability, he said.
"We have many poor people living in places of strategic importance and border areas, mainly inhabited by ethnic groups. Failure to solve the food and clothing problem will jeopardize national unity, frontier stability and even the national security, " Jiang warned.
He called for increased investment in poverty alleviation from central and local governments, urging officials in impoverished areas to give top priority to poverty relief.
The efforts to wipe out poverty must be continued without relaxation even after the task of providing the poverty-stricken rural population with basic food and clothes is completed, Jiang said.
The top priority for poverty relief in the next century is the feeding and clothing of the remaining poverty-stricken population in the rural areas and further improvement of lives of those that have just been pulled out of poverty, he noted, adding that efforts should also be made to promote the social and economic development of those areas in an all-round way.
"Poverty relief in the next century must be viewed as part of China's economic development strategy and considered together with the strategy of speeding up the construction of the central and western regions, so as to reduce the gap between the eastern and western regions for the goal of getting rich together," he said.
As a country in the primary stage of socialism, China must brace for a protracted struggle in its poverty relief efforts, he continued.
Jiang said China's population now stands at 1.25 billion, and might hit 1.6 billion by the year 2030; its per-capita farmland is less than one-third of the world's average, and its per-capita water resources only one-fourth.
China is feeding one-fifth of the world's population with no more than one-10th of the world's farmland and less than one-seventh of water resources.
It will be quite a long historical process for China to change from a country that has an overwhelmingly rural population and depends mainly on human power to an industrialized country that boasts modern agriculture and service industries, and has most of its population living in urban areas, Jiang said.
He quoted the late Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping as saying that the consolidation and development of the socialist system will take the efforts of generations, or even dozens of generations of Chinese people. Hence, he said, we must have a long-term plan in our minds and work toward that goal step by step.
While noting that China can not expect lockstep development among its regions through the means of egalitarianism, Jiang said the time has now come for China to accelerate the development of its central and western regions.
" We should lose no time in speeding up the development of the central and western areas, while continuing to accelerate the pace of development in the eastern coastal areas," he said.
"From now on, this must be considered a major strategic task of the Party and the government and given greater priority," Jiang stressed.
He noted that the central and western regions of the country hold very important strategic positions because of their vast areas and rich resources of power, minerals and agriculture, which are essential to China's sustainable development.
He pledged that the government will continue to give priority to the central and western regions in arranging investment projects in the fields of water resources, electricity, transportation, environmental protection and resources development.
In fact, he said, the government has been doing just that in recent years. For example, 62 percent of the extra-budget investment in 1998 were spent on such projects in the central and western regions.
Jiang called for enhanced economic and technological cooperation between the western and eastern regions for their mutual benefit. In particular, he said, eastern regions should give priority to helping the improvement of the basic conditions of life and production in the western regions.
Noting that it is the task and responsibility of the Party to serve the people, Jiang said that the fight against poverty would be a major test of Party members and cadres.
He charged all Party members and officials to go to the poverty-stricken areas, to hear the people's opinions and help the people cast off poverty.
He said the dispatch of Party officials to poverty-stricken areas should be an important way to test and judge them, and only those who have survived the test and won the trust of the people should be promoted.
Jiang finally urged the whole Party and society to become further mobilized, to hold higher the banner of Deng Xiaoping Theory, and to stick to the strategy outlined by the 15th National Congress of the Party for the ultimate victory in the battle against poverty. (Xinhua)
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