Data on poverty relapse rates and impoverished households’ income stability will figure in evaluations of provincial districts’ poverty alleviation efforts in 2017, according to a senior official from the State Council Leading Group Office of Poverty Alleviation and Development.

Xia Gengsheng, a member of the group, said on Jan 3 that provinces and municipalities have begun to cross-evaluate their counterparts’ poverty alleviation efforts last year, and assessments by third parties such as universities and scientific research institutions will also be made.

However, “two provinces may not evaluate each other, and the third parties will not evaluate the districts they are from, so as to avoid interference,” Xia said.

Seven teams from Hebei and Hubei provinces and Chongqing municipality left for other regions on Jan 3, and more teams will be dispatched in the coming days.

Xia said the assessments aim to improve the work. “Practice over the past two years has shown it’s beneficial to carry out rigorous assessments, and they will become more rigorous in the next three years,” he said.

China has set a goal to complete building a “moderately prosperous society” in all respects by 2020, which requires the eradication of poverty.

The third party evaluation will analyze the source, pattern and stability of impoverished households’ income, instead of simply adding up the income, Xia said.

A final evaluation result will be decided by the year-end outside evaluation together with and the internal evaluations conducted throughout the year, and this will make the final result “more scientific and fair”, he said.

Xia said the central government will circulate a notice to award areas that stand out in the assessment, and will allocate more funds for the next year’s poverty alleviation work as an encouragement. “The final evaluation results will also be referred to in the assessment of the areas’ governments in 2017,” he said.

Xia also stressed that areas that disagree with their evaluation results can appeal to the evaluation team to recheck the results.

Lei Ming, director of the Institute on Poverty Research at Peking University, said the reasons for impoverishment vary across households and regions, and “the complexity requires a system that can guarantee the accuracy of its evaluation”.