No letup on poverty alleviation efforts

In his inspection tour of a previously poverty-stricken rural area in Chongqing last week, President Xi Jinping urged local officials to be vigilant toward villagers who having just bid farewell to impoverished lives might slip back into poverty for various reasons if relevant poverty alleviation measures are relaxed. Beijing Youth Daily comments:

China has lifted more than 700 million people out of poverty since it launched reform and opening-up in the late 1970s, and vowed to eliminate rural poverty by 2020.

By the end of last year, China still had about 16 million people living on less than about $1.9 per day. But judging from the pace of the past five years, when nearly 60 million people were lifted out of poverty, realizing the 2020 goal, statistically, will only be a matter of time.

Yet that does not mean the poverty alleviation work will be finished after that. Most of the remaining 16 million poverty-stricken population live in remote mountain areas and their poverty is often caused by multiple factors, which means the government must put in more resources proportionally to lift them above the poverty line.

And as Xi said, the poverty alleviation work should attach importance to not only increasing the income of the impoverished population, but also improving the quality of their lives. Thus it is necessary for grassroots governments to regularly review the conditions of the families whose income has just surpassed the poverty line, but who are still struggling with the basic needs of daily life. Serious illnesses, accidents and natural disasters could easily act as the last straw breaking the back of these families' delicate financial balances.

Also, even if these families can manage to stay above the poverty line, they are still in a state of comparative poverty in contrast with residents living in the better-off coastal regions, not only because of the income gap, but more importantly they lack equitable access to quality education, medical care, pensions and other public services.

So addressing the comparative poverty will be a main objective for the second half of the battle against poverty in China, which might be longer and harder.