Women officials from the government of Guigang, Southwest China’s Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, chats with local farmers amid a poverty alleviation campaign in March. (Photo: people.cn)

As China has set its goal to eradicate poverty by 2020, local governments at all levels are now taking measures to put the “targeted poverty alleviation” policy into practice.

In its 13th Five-Year Plan, a blueprint for the country’s development from 2016 to 2020, China pledges to lift impoverished rural residents out of poverty. All “impoverished counties” across the country will lose that label by 2020 through the government’s resolve to eliminate regional poverty through a “targeted poverty alleviation policy.”

Of the 55 million residents of Southwest China’s Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, the local government identified 5.385 million as impoverished after conducting on-the-spot investigations in 2014.

To ensure the accuracy of the information they collected, local governments drafted detailed assessment forms. The 5-page-form listed a total of 98 indexes in 18 categories, covering housing, household appliances, agricultural machinery, health conditions and labor force. At the same time, independent work groups were also set up to conduct these household surveys, so that assessment will be impartial and transparent.

Any misjudgment on households’ financial situations was also corrected in a timely fashion. For example, Huang Yulan, a villager from Lixin village in the region was not included in the list of impoverished households at first, but after they received complaints, local governments included her name after verification.

Zhou Yijue, the mayor of Bose, said that the city has sent 13,000 officials to conduct door-to-door surveys since October 2015, and finished 503,500 cases of targeted poverty identification.

The city plans to remove the label of 12 poor counties by 2019, and use another year to check the results, so as to ensure the city can be built into a moderately well-off society in 2020, said Zhou, who is also a deputy of the National People’s Congress.

China’s devotion to poverty relief also receives praise from the international community, who believe China has set an example for other countries. Chinese President Xi Jinping said that China has basically realized the Millennium Development Goals at the UN Sustainable Development Summit last September.

“China has lifted 439 million people out of poverty and made remarkable progress in areas of education, health care and women's welfare,” Xi stressed.

Chinese leaders maintain that only shared and sustainable development can bring real benefits to the people. To put the philosophy into practice, China pledged to set up a fund, with initial contribution of $2 billion, to support South-South Cooperation and assist developing countries in implementing their 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

China will also do its best to raise its investment in the world’s least developed countries to $12 billion by 2030, President Xi told the Sustainable Development Summit held in New York.

Meanwhile, China will set up a knowledge center for international development to conduct research and exchange ideas on development theories and practices.