Gov't seeking innovative anti-poverty plans
The State Council has released guidelines that call for deeper and closer collaboration between provinces from the developed east and still-developing west of China in an effort to bridge the regional development gap and meet the government's target of eliminating poverty by 2020.
The government has paired richer eastern provinces and municipalities, such as Guangdong, Jiangsu and Shanghai, with underdeveloped western provinces and autonomous regions, such as Guizhou, Qinghai and Tibet, to cooperate on poverty reduction through governance, capital and talent assistance, according to guidelines issued by the State Council.
The guidelines call on eastern regions to increase their financial support to western regions, while calling on funding recipients to increase their supervision to ensure the money is wisely spent.
The eastern provinces will assess each other's work in helping the west, which is called cross-assessment, Hong Tianyun, deputy director of the State Council Leading Group Office of Poverty Alleviation and Development of China, told a press conference on Thursday in Beijing, according to a report on the State Council Information Office website.
"For instance, Jiangsu will assess Guangdong, Guangdong will assess Zhejiang, and Zhejiang will assess Shandong," Hong said, adding that this mode of assessment will allow eastern provinces to learn from each other and push forward the anti-poverty campaign together, and at the same time can also check if the recipient of funds is deserving.
Hong explained that "The recipient provinces need to change their old mentality. The west must improve its services and connect with the east with enough motivation, and run the projects properly."
Favorable policies will be put in place to encourage enterprises, especially those in labor-intensive sectors, to invest in underdeveloped western regions, according to the guidelines.
Talent and personnel support is another key mission laid out in the guidelines. The guidelines call for richer provinces to mobilize talent in the fields of education, sanitation, technology and culture to work in the west.
Unequal growth
China is the second-largest economy in the world, but due to the vast territory and 1.3 billion population, poverty remains a challenge.
China's GDP growth is faster than other major economies in the world, but economic growth has been extremely unequal across the country. In modern China, there are still tragedies caused by poverty, such as when in 2012, five left-behind children in Guizhou Province died in a rubbish bin after attempting to light a fire to keep warm.
There are many challenges in poverty reduction, since the government is serious about eliminating poverty, said Wang Sangui, a professor at the School of Agricultural Economics and Rural Development at the Renmin University of China who specializes in rural poverty studies.
An anonymous county-level official in Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region told the Global Times that "as poverty reduction requires a lot of time and there is no quick economic return, some local officials just prefer to simply give food and money to the villagers living under the poverty line from time to time, rather than convince them to learn how to use their land to grow or farm, or train them for a proper job."
"In short, give them fish but don't teach them how to fish, and in order to push local officials to finish poverty reduction efforts, some provincial government declared that local chiefs will not be relocated until they finish this mission," Wang said "but of course, in some cases, the poor don't want to learn how to fish."
"For instance, some people living under the poverty line in rural areas believe that poverty reduction is the government's mission, they can just wait for the aid and donations; let the government feed them forever," Wang said.
Older generations already stuck in the poverty trap did not benefit from a good education, so it is sometimes hard to improve their lives, Wang said, adding that the government does not have many effective solutions for this.
"We can just give hope to their children, give them the opportunity to be educated and make their lives different from their parents," he said.
Tough fight
On Friday, China's State Council, the cabinet, released a poverty alleviation plan for the 13th Five-Year Plan period (2016-2020).
China plans to lift all of its poor out of poverty by 2020, especially those who live in the nation's 128,000 poor villages and 832 poor counties, where poverty has become a regional issue, according to the document.
The plan is critical to achieving the country's ambitious goal of stamping out poverty by 2020.
Poverty relief is high on China's agenda. China has lifted 700 million people out of poverty through more than 30 years of reform and opening-up, accounting for more than 70 percent of the global reduction in poverty in that period.
Yet despite past achievements, the country's fight against poverty remains tough.
By the end of 2015, China still had 55.75 million people living under the poverty line, equivalent to the entire population of a medium-sized country, the Xinhua News Agency reported.
