China is to carry out more favorable policies to benefit the have-nots and step up efforts to alleviate poverty in the country, according to Vice Premier Hui Liangyu on Friday.

Speaking at a forum on the country's poverty relief patterns and progress of the United Nations Millennium Goals, he said "We will give emphasis to our strategy of poverty relief, and improve our policies for the interests of the poor."

The Chinese phrase "fu pin", meaning to help relieve poverty, had become the official mantra in the country, which the government would carry on as state policy.

Hui said 30 years on, the country's reform and opening-up policy adopted in 1978 had brought about robust economic growth, and a sharply reduced population barely making a living.

Fan Xiaojian, director of the State Council Group Office for Poverty Alleviation and Development, said the country's poor had been reduced to 15 million, from 250 million in 1978.

"Poverty is one big challenge faced by the whole world. China will carry on the fight against poverty and contribute to the realization of the United Nations Millennium Development Goals," Hui said.

Since 2006, the country had started its nine year free compulsory education in the underdeveloped western regions, and now, the policy had gone nationwide.

The National Development and Reform Commission, the top economic planner, on Tuesday publicized a plan online about setting up a "safe, effective, convenient and affordable" healthcare system that would cover all urban and rural residents by 2020.

So far, the country's New Rural Cooperative Medical Care Program, under which residents could benefit from a fund pool, had covered about 800 million people in the vast rural areas.

Under the program, a farmer participant pays 10 yuan (1.46 US dollars) annually while the state, provincial, municipal and county governments jointly contribute 40 yuan for the cooperative fund.

But despite the downsized destitution, and the ongoing beneficial education and healthcare policies, the country was still faced with great difficulties as a large number of impoverished lived in areas of severe natural conditions and of poor basic infrastructure, according to Fan.

(Xinhua News Agency October 18, 2008)