China has resettled 6.8 million people from poor areas with harsh environments in an attempt to free them of poverty, the country's top economic planner said on Friday.
Since 2001, the central government has spent 36.3 billion yuan (5.7 billion U.S. dollars) on resettlements, said the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC). From 2010 to 2015, China has spent 23.1 billion yuan on resettling 3.94 million citizens in 17 provinces and regions. There are still about 10 million poor Chinese living in mountains and deserts who need to be resettled in the next five years.
More than 600 million people have been lifted out of poverty in the past 15 years, accounting for about 70 percent of all those brought out of poverty worldwide,.
Addressing the Global Poverty Reduction and Development Forum in Beijing on Friday, Chinese President Xi Jinping pledged that China will do more to lift the country's remaining 70 million poor people above the poverty line by 2020.
