Province with largest remaining poor population eliminates absolute poverty

KUNMING -- Southwest China's Yunnan province, which had the country's largest remaining poor population at the end of last year, has eradicated absolute poverty, officials said on Saturday.

The last nine counties in the province were delisted from the poverty-stricken county list, which meant all its 88 poverty-stricken counties have shaken off poverty, said Huang Yunbo, director of the provincial poverty alleviation office.

It also marks that the 11 ethnic minority groups with relatively smaller populations in the province have bid farewell to poverty.

Since the start of this year, 18.5 billion yuan (about $2.8 billion) has been injected into industries supporting poverty reduction in the 88 counties.

Paved roads have been built in all the 8,502 poverty-stricken villages, and electricity and optical network have covered them all, Huang said.

The feat of poverty elimination can not be accomplished without support from other economically active regions of China. Under the pairing-up policy, Shanghai and South China's Guangdong province invested more than 13.5 billion yuan in financial aid and implemented 4,127 supporting projects to lift 372,200 people in Yunnan out of poverty since 2016, according to Huang.

Zhang Weihua, deputy head of Yunnan's Zhenxiong county, was sent from the city of Dongguan in Guangdong, said that despite the impact on the economy from the COVID-19 epidemic, Dongguan still allocated 130 million yuan in financial aid to Zhenxiong, 90 million yuan more than last year.