Ou Qingping, deputy director of the State Council Leading Group of Poverty Alleviation and Development, talked about the development of national poverty alleviation during the State Council policy briefing on Feb 24, which was discussed at this week’s State Council executive meeting.

Past achievements

Ou said that in the past year, China has accomplished the plan to help more than 10 million people in rural areas out of poverty. Infrastructure and public service construction have been improved significantly.

Poverty alleviation has become a new economic growth point. With the return of labor forces, the development of poverty-stricken areas has turned around and more jobs have been created locally.

Last year was the first year of the fight against poverty during the 13th Five-Year plan period. The government has made historical achievements.

The policy system has been further improved. Last year, the State Council executive meeting reviewed and adopted the 13th Five-Year plan on poverty alleviation. The general offices of the CPC Central Committee and the State Council issued 10 supporting documents, 32 lead departments as well as 77 participating departments introduced a total of 118 policy documents or implementation plans.

Local authorities took different measures to alleviate poverty by setting up innovative industries such as featured agriculture, rural tourism and e-commerce. State-owned enterprises and private entities were also encouraged to take part in poverty alleviation efforts.

Future plan

According to Ou, the government will try everything in its power to help another 10 million people out of poverty in 2017.

The central government decided to implement the most stringent inspection system. In 2016, a third party was asked to assess the effectiveness of poverty alleviation work, provincial audits were cross examined and an assessment of the performance of poverty alleviation funds in provinces was organized.

This year, the government will further improve the file system, which started in 2014, to record the poor population more accurately. Now there are about 40 million poor people in the country. This year the government will try to maintain the trend of getting 10 million people out of poverty in order to ensure the completion of creating a population of zero poor people by 2020.

Financially, China will continue to support relevant financial institutions to increase investment in poor areas.