Poverty alleviation - advancing in explorations
Original, GPIG, 04-28-2018
Xiangxi Tujia and Miao Autonomous Prefecture is a mountainous area, which borders the provinces of Hubei and Guizhou and Chongqing Municipality, forming the “Northwest gateway” of Hunan Province. It is also a beautiful and mysterious land where scenic spots like the Southern Great Wall, the Mengdong River, and the ancient town of Fenghuang are located, and home to a host of world famous literary figures and singers. But it is an impoverished land where over 1.5 million people in the rural population lived under the poverty line in the early 1980s. This meant that 84% of its rural population were living in impoverished conditions. Therefore, poverty elimination has been the dream of generations of people living in this area.
The economic reforms in the early 1980s helped reduce rural poverty in Xiangxi Prefecture. The number of impoverished people dropped by an average of 15,000 from 1978 to 1983. By 1993, the impoverished rural population in Xiangxi Prefecture was reduced to 900,000, and in 2000 this figure further declined to a mere 230,000 living below the poverty line as a result of the government’s Seven-Year Priority Poverty Alleviation Program. However, taking into account 900,000 new additions to the impoverished rural population, the total impoverished rural population now stood at 1.13 million.
The ancient town of Fenghuang
Although the decline in the impoverished rural population in Xiangxi Prefecture was impressive with the poverty-stricken population almost halved from over 1.8 million in 1978 to just below 900,000 in 2010 - which means almost a million people were lifted out of the vicious cycle of poverty in the past 32 years, the fact is that poverty still remains a serious issue.
Guided by the Central Government’s development-oriented approach to poverty alleviation, the local government of Hunan has attached great importance to the elimination of poverty in the Xiangxi Prefecture. These efforts are supported by the Ministry of Agriculture, Sinopec, Guangzhou Military Region Command, provincial organs and industries, and the six cities under the direct jurisdiction of Hunan Province. The Kuok Foundation (Hong Kong) built the first long-term pilot project for poverty alleviation on the Chinese mainland in Baojing County, Xiangxi Prefecture aiming at “achieving poverty alleviation and building a well-off and harmonious society”. This created a poverty alleviation blueprint which is not only specialized but one that has also integrated the participation of industries and the society.
During the period from 1978 to 1983, when systematic reforms led to poverty alleviation through increasing productivity and improving the basic infrastructure in rural areas in Xiangxi, this was done through the adoption of the household contract responsibility system, reforming the pricing mechanism for agricultural products and the development of township and village enterprises.
As a result of the large-scale development-oriented poverty alleviation efforts from 1984 to 1993, the four pillar industries model was established alongside promoting the large-scale cultivation of ponkans in Xiangxi.
During the period from 1994 to 2000, when the government’s Seven-Year Priority Poverty Alleviation Program was carried out, Xiangxi Prefecture focused on the implementation of the “Six-Six Poverty Alleviation Program”, which aimed to provide 600,000 impoverished rural people in Xiangxi with adequate food and clothes in six years.
From 2001 to 2010, 90 remote and extremely impoverished villages as well as 1,100 key villages were targeted for poverty alleviation. Poverty alleviation efforts were made through the development of industries, infrastructure, ecological energies and labor training.
The rolling mountains of Xiangxi once shunned modern civilization as well as fortunes. To create a path to the outside world, over two hundred Miao people in Shibawan Village in Jishou City, Xiangxi Prefecture had to overcome difficulties, and spend 1,500 days, working for more than 120,000 man-days, using over 11 tons of explosives and 48 drilling steels to construct a road on a massive cliff. The road has since ushered in various business opportunities for the whole village and helped the villagers make a fortune. It is the spirit of hard work and perseverance that made the poverty alleviation efforts in Xiangxi standout.
In 2011, Xiangxi Prefecture was granted a special fund worth 280 million yuan from the Ministry of Finance, which marked a historical milestone in the poverty alleviation efforts in the area. In recent years, Xiangxi has become the pilot zone for poverty alleviation, with programs such as the National Poverty Alleviation Project in Wuling Mountain Areas and efforts to link the Rural Minimum Living Standard Guarantee System with the policy of development-oriented poverty alleviation. Xiangxi also has National Public Welfare Fund from Lottery Sales, Mutual Aid Fund for Impoverished Villages, Information-Driven Poverty Alleviation in Rural Areas, an Education Fund for College Students from Low-Income Families and an Education Fund for Left-behind Children from Low-Income Families, etc.
Premier Li Keqiang showed great care for the case of a school girl from a poor family in Xiangxi. His letter to the Xiangxi girl who was too poor to peruse further studies encouraged many students from low- income families to keep working hard and striving for their own futures. It takes not only the efforts of these poor families, but also the attention and support from the government as well as the society to actually solve problems with regard to education. Such moving stories not only show but also expand the rich meaning of China’s efforts to guarantee people’s livelihood.
The blueprint for Xiangxi is now turning into reality: projects are being carried out, including Ten Model Projects for Regional Development, Ten Priority Poverty Alleviation Projects to Address the Problem of People’s Livelihood, the establishment of Ten Industries with Ten Billion Yuan Revenues, Fifty Key Industrial Projects. Overall almost 400 billion yuan has been invested to develop key industries in the rural area, including the mass-scale cultivation of orange, kiwi fruit, tea, lilies, tobacco, and Chinese herbs, that will cover a total area of 4.5 million mu (a unit of area, one mu equals 666.7 square meters) in ten years.
The 30-odd years’ history of poverty alleviation in Xiangxi is a model of poverty alleviation in China as a whole. After decades of trials and hardships, poverty alleviation in China has produced fruitful results. China has never stopped trying to realize the ultimate goal of a poverty-free world.
As the world’s biggest developing country, China’s poverty alleviation process has been accompanied by economic as well as social changes. Before the Reform and Opening-up policy was adopted in 1978, China was confronted-with widespread poverty characterized by harsh living and working conditions. In 1978, China’s per capita GNP was only 632 dollars, 10% of the world average level, and 34% of the average level in developing countries. It was not until the adoption of the Reform and Opening-up policy that the situation improved in China.
The 30-odd years’ history of poverty alleviation in China has seen the change brought about by lifting large chunks of the population out of poverty. During the process, the Chinese government researched into poverty alleviation policies focusing on multiple levels, from impoverished people, to impoverished villages, counties and regions. State directed poverty alleviation efforts have gradually moved from “economic aids” - in the late 1970s and the early 1980s to improving the capability of impoverished people to help themselves and drive the overall development of villages and communities while narrowing regional development gaps.
The Third Plenary Session of the Eleventh Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC) held in December 1978 established the basic road map of China with a focus on economic development and marked the beginning of the Reform and Opening-up efforts. Driven by the institutional reforms in the ownership of rural farmlands, market reforms and reform in the employment system, this was a time when poverty alleviation was the most effective in Chinese history - the rural population living in abject poverty has dropped from 250 million people in 1978 to 125 million people in 1985, and it continued declining at an average annual rate of 17.86 million.
In 1986, The State Council Leading Group for development-oriented poverty alleviation - a specific organ for poverty elimination in China was established, with an office attached. As it began to implement well-planned, well-organized and large-scale poverty alleviation programs through development, poverty alleviation in China entered a new stage.
The focus of special poverty eradication programs also changed from poverty alleviation through aid to development-oriented poverty alleviation. The period from 1986 to 1993 was the exploring period of large-scale development-oriented poverty alleviation projects. This approach focuses on exploiting the natural resources in the poverty-stricken areas to increase productivity aongside providing government assistance to poor families. As people in these areas have accumulated wealth and learned how to increase productivity by themselves, they could break out of poverty on their own. Development-oriented poverty alleviation involves various other measures such as improving infrastructure, promoting the development of education and providing preferential policies and loans.
In the period of priority poverty alleviation, rural impoverished population was provided with adequate food and clothes. In 1994, the State Council proposed the government’s Seven-Year Priority Poverty Alleviation Program, calling for personnel, material resources, financial aids and the support of people from all walks of life. It aimed to realize certain goals including “addressing the problem of inadequate food and clothes for rural impoverished people by the end of 2000 and reducing the phenomenon of returning to poverty; improving infrastructure; improving the backward conditions of cultural development, improving the backwardness in culture, education and medical and health services, bringing the natural growth rate within the prescribed range”.
Within the three years from 1997 to 1999, the number of impoverished people without adequate food and clothes in China declined at an annual average of 8 million people, the best record since China had set out to alleviate poverty in the 1990s. By the end of 2000, the goals of the State Seven-Year Priority Poverty Alleviation Program were achieved.
However, by the end of 2000, more than 32 million impoverished rural population in China still suffered from the lack of food and clothes and lived in abject poverty. This accounted for 3% of the total rural population; the impoverished population with low income totaled more than 60 million. Overall these 90 million people became the target of poverty alleviation efforts in the new stage. They distributed in vast areas but in a relatively concentrated pattern, posing greater challenge for poverty alleviation.
Deepening poverty alleviation efforts were driven by the “two wheels” approach - development-oriented poverty alleviation and the minimum living standard guarantee system. After the completion of the State Seven-Year Priority Poverty Alleviation Program, the Chinese government issued The Outline for Poverty Alleviation in Rural China in May 2001. According to the distribution and features of impoverished rural population, the Outline pointed out that the focus of poverty alleviation should be on ethnic minority inhabited areas, old revolutionary bases, boarder areas and other poverty-stricken areas where a concentration of the impoverished population was. The Outline also included policies for poverty alleviation at the new stage. For example, policies that are market-oriented integrated with adjustments of the economic structure, supportive of farming in poverty-stricken areas; focused on developing science, education, culture and public health and enhancing the overall development of poverty-stricken areas, etc. The policies encouraged wide participation in poverty alleviation, including support of Party and government offices to designated poverty-stricken areas, counterpart aid of developed coastal regions to poverty-stricken areas in the Western parts of China and cooperation between Eastern parts of China and Western inland regions in poverty alleviation.
In 2007, the minimum living standard guarantee system covered all rural areas in China. Such a system offered farmers with basic material aids from the state according to state stipulated standards when the farmers were no longer able to maintain minimum living standards. As the two pillars of the state poverty alleviation strategy, poverty alleviation projects in rural areas along with the minimum living standard guarantee system had a positive impact on reducing poverty levels, helping with farmers’ self-development, improving conditions for living and producing in rural areas thereby facilitating the harmonious development of rural areas.
To ensure that all population in rural areas with an income below the poverty line receive effective support, the Third Plenary Session of the Seventeenth CPC Central Committee proposed the policy of carrying out development-oriented poverty alleviation in order to make an effective connection between the establishment of the minimum living standard guarantee system of social welfare network in rural areas and the implementation of the development-oriented poverty alleviation policy.
Original, GPIG, 04-28-2018
Xiangxi Tujia and Miao Autonomous Prefecture is a mountainous area, which borders the provinces of Hubei and Guizhou and Chongqing Municipality, forming the “Northwest gateway” of Hunan Province. It is also a beautiful and mysterious land where scenic spots like the Southern Great Wall, the Mengdong River, and the ancient town of Fenghuang are located, and home to a host of world famous literary figures and singers. But it is an impoverished land where over 1.5 million people in the rural population lived under the poverty line in the early 1980s. This meant that 84% of its rural population were living in impoverished conditions. Therefore, poverty elimination has been the dream of generations of people living in this area.
The economic reforms in the early 1980s helped reduce rural poverty in Xiangxi Prefecture. The number of impoverished people dropped by an average of 15,000 from 1978 to 1983. By 1993, the impoverished rural population in Xiangxi Prefecture was reduced to 900,000, and in 2000 this figure further declined to a mere 230,000 living below the poverty line as a result of the government’s Seven-Year Priority Poverty Alleviation Program. However, taking into account 900,000 new additions to the impoverished rural population, the total impoverished rural population now stood at 1.13 million.
The ancient town of Fenghuang
Although the decline in the impoverished rural population in Xiangxi Prefecture was impressive with the poverty-stricken population almost halved from over 1.8 million in 1978 to just below 900,000 in 2010 - which means almost a million people were lifted out of the vicious cycle of poverty in the past 32 years, the fact is that poverty still remains a serious issue.
Guided by the Central Government’s development-oriented approach to poverty alleviation, the local government of Hunan has attached great importance to the elimination of poverty in the Xiangxi Prefecture. These efforts are supported by the Ministry of Agriculture, Sinopec, Guangzhou Military Region Command, provincial organs and industries, and the six cities under the direct jurisdiction of Hunan Province. The Kuok Foundation (Hong Kong) built the first long-term pilot project for poverty alleviation on the Chinese mainland in Baojing County, Xiangxi Prefecture aiming at “achieving poverty alleviation and building a well-off and harmonious society”. This created a poverty alleviation blueprint which is not only specialized but one that has also integrated the participation of industries and the society.
During the period from 1978 to 1983, when systematic reforms led to poverty alleviation through increasing productivity and improving the basic infrastructure in rural areas in Xiangxi, this was done through the adoption of the household contract responsibility system, reforming the pricing mechanism for agricultural products and the development of township and village enterprises.
As a result of the large-scale development-oriented poverty alleviation efforts from 1984 to 1993, the four pillar industries model was established alongside promoting the large-scale cultivation of ponkans in Xiangxi.
During the period from 1994 to 2000, when the government’s Seven-Year Priority Poverty Alleviation Program was carried out, Xiangxi Prefecture focused on the implementation of the “Six-Six Poverty Alleviation Program”, which aimed to provide 600,000 impoverished rural people in Xiangxi with adequate food and clothes in six years.
From 2001 to 2010, 90 remote and extremely impoverished villages as well as 1,100 key villages were targeted for poverty alleviation. Poverty alleviation efforts were made through the development of industries, infrastructure, ecological energies and labor training.
The rolling mountains of Xiangxi once shunned modern civilization as well as fortunes. To create a path to the outside world, over two hundred Miao people in Shibawan Village in Jishou City, Xiangxi Prefecture had to overcome difficulties, and spend 1,500 days, working for more than 120,000 man-days, using over 11 tons of explosives and 48 drilling steels to construct a road on a massive cliff. The road has since ushered in various business opportunities for the whole village and helped the villagers make a fortune. It is the spirit of hard work and perseverance that made the poverty alleviation efforts in Xiangxi standout.
In 2011, Xiangxi Prefecture was granted a special fund worth 280 million yuan from the Ministry of Finance, which marked a historical milestone in the poverty alleviation efforts in the area. In recent years, Xiangxi has become the pilot zone for poverty alleviation, with programs such as the National Poverty Alleviation Project in Wuling Mountain Areas and efforts to link the Rural Minimum Living Standard Guarantee System with the policy of development-oriented poverty alleviation. Xiangxi also has National Public Welfare Fund from Lottery Sales, Mutual Aid Fund for Impoverished Villages, Information-Driven Poverty Alleviation in Rural Areas, an Education Fund for College Students from Low-Income Families and an Education Fund for Left-behind Children from Low-Income Families, etc.
Premier Li Keqiang showed great care for the case of a school girl from a poor family in Xiangxi. His letter to the Xiangxi girl who was too poor to peruse further studies encouraged many students from low- income families to keep working hard and striving for their own futures. It takes not only the efforts of these poor families, but also the attention and support from the government as well as the society to actually solve problems with regard to education. Such moving stories not only show but also expand the rich meaning of China’s efforts to guarantee people’s livelihood.
The blueprint for Xiangxi is now turning into reality: projects are being carried out, including Ten Model Projects for Regional Development, Ten Priority Poverty Alleviation Projects to Address the Problem of People’s Livelihood, the establishment of Ten Industries with Ten Billion Yuan Revenues, Fifty Key Industrial Projects. Overall almost 400 billion yuan has been invested to develop key industries in the rural area, including the mass-scale cultivation of orange, kiwi fruit, tea, lilies, tobacco, and Chinese herbs, that will cover a total area of 4.5 million mu (a unit of area, one mu equals 666.7 square meters) in ten years.
The 30-odd years’ history of poverty alleviation in Xiangxi is a model of poverty alleviation in China as a whole. After decades of trials and hardships, poverty alleviation in China has produced fruitful results. China has never stopped trying to realize the ultimate goal of a poverty-free world.
As the world’s biggest developing country, China’s poverty alleviation process has been accompanied by economic as well as social changes. Before the Reform and Opening-up policy was adopted in 1978, China was confronted-with widespread poverty characterized by harsh living and working conditions. In 1978, China’s per capita GNP was only 632 dollars, 10% of the world average level, and 34% of the average level in developing countries. It was not until the adoption of the Reform and Opening-up policy that the situation improved in China.
The 30-odd years’ history of poverty alleviation in China has seen the change brought about by lifting large chunks of the population out of poverty. During the process, the Chinese government researched into poverty alleviation policies focusing on multiple levels, from impoverished people, to impoverished villages, counties and regions. State directed poverty alleviation efforts have gradually moved from “economic aids” - in the late 1970s and the early 1980s to improving the capability of impoverished people to help themselves and drive the overall development of villages and communities while narrowing regional development gaps.
The Third Plenary Session of the Eleventh Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC) held in December 1978 established the basic road map of China with a focus on economic development and marked the beginning of the Reform and Opening-up efforts. Driven by the institutional reforms in the ownership of rural farmlands, market reforms and reform in the employment system, this was a time when poverty alleviation was the most effective in Chinese history - the rural population living in abject poverty has dropped from 250 million people in 1978 to 125 million people in 1985, and it continued declining at an average annual rate of 17.86 million.
In 1986, The State Council Leading Group for development-oriented poverty alleviation - a specific organ for poverty elimination in China was established, with an office attached. As it began to implement well-planned, well-organized and large-scale poverty alleviation programs through development, poverty alleviation in China entered a new stage.
The focus of special poverty eradication programs also changed from poverty alleviation through aid to development-oriented poverty alleviation. The period from 1986 to 1993 was the exploring period of large-scale development-oriented poverty alleviation projects. This approach focuses on exploiting the natural resources in the poverty-stricken areas to increase productivity aongside providing government assistance to poor families. As people in these areas have accumulated wealth and learned how to increase productivity by themselves, they could break out of poverty on their own. Development-oriented poverty alleviation involves various other measures such as improving infrastructure, promoting the development of education and providing preferential policies and loans.
In the period of priority poverty alleviation, rural impoverished population was provided with adequate food and clothes. In 1994, the State Council proposed the government’s Seven-Year Priority Poverty Alleviation Program, calling for personnel, material resources, financial aids and the support of people from all walks of life. It aimed to realize certain goals including “addressing the problem of inadequate food and clothes for rural impoverished people by the end of 2000 and reducing the phenomenon of returning to poverty; improving infrastructure; improving the backward conditions of cultural development, improving the backwardness in culture, education and medical and health services, bringing the natural growth rate within the prescribed range”.
Within the three years from 1997 to 1999, the number of impoverished people without adequate food and clothes in China declined at an annual average of 8 million people, the best record since China had set out to alleviate poverty in the 1990s. By the end of 2000, the goals of the State Seven-Year Priority Poverty Alleviation Program were achieved.
However, by the end of 2000, more than 32 million impoverished rural population in China still suffered from the lack of food and clothes and lived in abject poverty. This accounted for 3% of the total rural population; the impoverished population with low income totaled more than 60 million. Overall these 90 million people became the target of poverty alleviation efforts in the new stage. They distributed in vast areas but in a relatively concentrated pattern, posing greater challenge for poverty alleviation.
Deepening poverty alleviation efforts were driven by the “two wheels” approach - development-oriented poverty alleviation and the minimum living standard guarantee system. After the completion of the State Seven-Year Priority Poverty Alleviation Program, the Chinese government issued The Outline for Poverty Alleviation in Rural China in May 2001. According to the distribution and features of impoverished rural population, the Outline pointed out that the focus of poverty alleviation should be on ethnic minority inhabited areas, old revolutionary bases, boarder areas and other poverty-stricken areas where a concentration of the impoverished population was. The Outline also included policies for poverty alleviation at the new stage. For example, policies that are market-oriented integrated with adjustments of the economic structure, supportive of farming in poverty-stricken areas; focused on developing science, education, culture and public health and enhancing the overall development of poverty-stricken areas, etc. The policies encouraged wide participation in poverty alleviation, including support of Party and government offices to designated poverty-stricken areas, counterpart aid of developed coastal regions to poverty-stricken areas in the Western parts of China and cooperation between Eastern parts of China and Western inland regions in poverty alleviation.
In 2007, the minimum living standard guarantee system covered all rural areas in China. Such a system offered farmers with basic material aids from the state according to state stipulated standards when the farmers were no longer able to maintain minimum living standards. As the two pillars of the state poverty alleviation strategy, poverty alleviation projects in rural areas along with the minimum living standard guarantee system had a positive impact on reducing poverty levels, helping with farmers’ self-development, improving conditions for living and producing in rural areas thereby facilitating the harmonious development of rural areas.
To ensure that all population in rural areas with an income below the poverty line receive effective support, the Third Plenary Session of the Seventeenth CPC Central Committee proposed the policy of carrying out development-oriented poverty alleviation in order to make an effective connection between the establishment of the minimum living standard guarantee system of social welfare network in rural areas and the implementation of the development-oriented poverty alleviation policy.
