Poverty alleviation
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China Daily, November 17, 2011
With common prosperity as the goal of socialism with Chinese characteristics, poverty alleviation has always been at the top on the agenda for the Chinese government.
What the government has achieved in the past three decades since the country started its reform and opening-up in the late 1970s, testifies to the effectiveness of the policies it has implemented in this regard.
In 1978, the total number of rural residents living in poverty was 250 million, 30.7 percent of the total rural population. By the year 2000, the percentage had been reduced to just 3 percent of the total rural population at that time, 30 million people.
Instead of just offering financial aid to poor rural villagers, the central government introduced the contract responsibility system, which meant that production and management of public farmland was entrusted to individual farming households through long-term contracts. This greatly stimulated agricultural output and raised rural productivity, improving villagers' livelihoods.
However, ensuring that all its citizens are fed and clothed is the least the country aspires to. So the poverty alleviation target has been repeatedly changed so that everyone can enjoy a more comfortable life. As a result, the poverty line was raised to 1,274 yuan ($200) a year in 2010, and it will likely be raised even higher in the near future.
That the central government's outlay on agriculture, rural areas and villagers increased from 214.42 billion yuan in 2003 to 857.79 billion in 2010, testifies to the importance the government has attached to poverty alleviation and rural development.
The subsidies the central government paid to the rural cooperative medical care scheme totaled 1.4 billion yuan in 2010 alone, which benefited about 46.15 million villagers. Quite a number of local governments have started to offer aged rural villagers pensions in their attempt to make life easier for them.
Various other policies have been implemented in recent years to relieve the financial burden on rural residents. The agriculture tax was abolished from 2006, and rural students have been exempted from tuition and miscellaneous fees from 2007. From October this year, the State Council launched a project to provide free lunch to 26 million rural students in 680 counties on a trial basis.
Central and local governments are also trying their best to help poverty-stricken villagers migrate from places where the harsh conditions make life a constant challenge to locations were conditions are more favorable.
However, despite these initiatives, improving the life of rural residents in the country's less-developed or underdeveloped areas will continue to be an important task for the governments at all levels in the years to come.
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