Su Jianjun, a poor farmer from northwest China's Gansu Province, cast his potato votes into boxes marked respectively with "road", "terrace", "technique training", and "radio and TV", items he thought could help pull him out of poverty and most need the government's help.

"Now I'm more confident that I'll be out of poverty since I myself have a say in making anti-poverty plans," Su said.

Together with his fellow villagers in Jinping Village in Gansu, the 27-year-old man was implementing a new anti-poverty method under the supervision of dozens of Chinese anti-poverty officials and experts with the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and the United Nations Development Programme.

The villagers were first divided into groups where they brainstorm around the concept of poverty and what it means to them.

By voting with potatoes, representatives of the 316 families in the village then chose to concentrate counter-poverty efforts on building roads, making terraces, holding technical training courses, and establishing radio and TV facilities.

"The core of the method is to kindle the poor's initiative by letting them take part in decision-making," said Li Xiaoyun, an ADB expert and professor of the Chinese Agriculture University. "This represents a remarkable change in ways of aiding the poor in China."

Lu Feijie, head of the Anti-Poverty Office of China's State Council, described the adoption of the new method as not only economically important but also of political significance because the move implies more democracy for farmers.

The world's most populous nation has waged a nationwide campaign to combat poverty since the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949, and has upgraded the campaign since itsreforms and opening-up in the late 1970s.

Official statistics indicate that the number of the poor in the country decreased to 30 million in 2000 from 250 million in 1978 and that the impoverished rate declined to some three percent from 30.7 percent in rural areas.

The central government has set the goal of lifting the remaining 30 million impoverished people out of poverty in the 10 years to come while preventing those just out of poverty from falling into poverty again.

However, problems like low efficiency in carrying out poverty reducing programs have been existing over the last years, when the government has taken care of almost everything, from deciding who were poor, why they were poor to how to lift them out of poverty.

"More powerful methods must be developed to knock the nuts in poverty fighting, for the remaining poverty-stricken people are usually in an extremely difficult situation," said Xu Jin, head of the Gansu Provincial Anti-Poverty Office, citing bad natural conditions, lack of infrastructure and illiteracy.

After drawing experience from the World Bank and a number of other countries, China began to experiment with the new method in north China's Hebei Province, south China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region and some other areas several years ago and has since made much progress.

The Anti-Poverty Office of the State Council has endorsed the renovated method and is introducing it to other parts of the nation.

Training courses are being held in Gansu to get all poverty-relief officials across the country familiar with the method.

(People's Daily November 16, 2001)