China on Thursday officially unveiled its poverty-reduction plan for the next decade -- in which it pledged to provide adequate food and clothing for poverty-stricken people while ensuring their access to compulsory education, basic medical services and housing by 2020 -- showing the government's determination to fight poverty.

In the Outline for Poverty Reduction and Development of China's Rural Areas (2011-2020), the government said ensuring sufficient food and clothing for the impoverished and helping them become prosperous will be a priority over the next decade.

The outline is the third state-level poverty-reduction plan and is part of the government's efforts to build a well-off society in an all-around way by 2020.

China launched its anti-poverty drive in an organized and large-scale manner in the mid-1980s. In 1994, it unveiled a plan designed to secure food supplies for 80 million rural residents over seven years, marking China's first attempt to designate a specific target for poverty reduction.

In 2001, China published the Outline for Poverty Reduction and Development of China's Rural Areas (2001-2010), reiterating the need to reduce poverty through development projects.

After a 30-year effort, the country's poverty-stricken population in rural regions fell to 26.88 million by the end of 2010 from 250 million in 1978. And the country also met the United Nations' Millennium Development Goal of halving its population living in poverty five years ahead of schedule.

Despite the progress China has made, poverty reduction will continue to be an arduous and long-term task for the government.

Some regions of the country remain poor, including the Liupanshan mountainous areas in Ningxia Hui autonomous region and the Qinling-Bashan mountainous regions, partly because of their unfavorable access to transportation, climate and geographic conditions.

The outline said the government will focus on helping poverty-stricken areas that lie in vast and contiguous stretches shake off poverty over the next decade.

"These regions will see intensified efforts aimed at fighting poverty and increased financial input from the government," said Wang Sangui, professor of the School of Agricultural Economics and Rural Development of Renmin University.

Currently, poverty reduction does not only mean providing adequate food and clothing for those in need, it also means letting them live with dignity, said Li Xiaoyun, a rural development expert at Renmin University.

"In the past, China faced the challenge of widespread absolute poverty. Right now, its main task is to deal with the yawning wealth gap between the rich and the poor," Li said.

Meanwhile, some rural residents easily fall back into poverty once struck by natural disasters and economic changes.

"The difficulty in eliminating poverty, therefore, lies not only in reducing the poverty-stricken population, but also in boosting the impoverished regions' capabilities for self-initiated development," Wang said.

The country also said in the outline it will continue to improve its social security network and make social security "a basic measure" for solving the problems of insufficient food and clothing.

Established in 2007, China's rural minimum living allowance system covered 52.14 million poverty-stricken farmers by the end of 2010.

With the outline's implementation, China will be more committed than ever to eliminating poverty and pursuing common prosperity over the next decade, analysts said.

This week the government also raised the poverty threshold to 2,300 yuan (361 U.S. dollars) annual net income, a 92-percent increase from the standard set in 2009. Under the new standard, more than 100 million rural residents became eligible for anti-poverty subsidies.

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