16.5 mln rural residents got rid of poverty in 2013

Poverty reduction in rural areas is making steady headway, said a white paper detailing the progress made in human rights in 2013 released on Monday.

"The central government appropriated 39.4 billion yuan on poverty reduction, an increase of 6.2 billion yuan over the previous year," said the white paper, published by the State Council Information Office under the title "Progress in China's Human Rights in 2013."

In 2013 the State Council issued Opinions on Promoting Rural Poverty Alleviation though Innovation Mechanisms. In 2013 some 16.5 million rural residents got rid of poverty. The per capita net income for rural residents in the counties which are key targets of the government's poverty-reduction work reached 5,389 yuan, an increase of 787 yuan over 2012, or up 13.8 percent in real terms, according to the white paper.

Education in poverty-stricken areas is better ensured, with bigger efforts being made in this regard. The expenditure from public finance on education in 2013 was 2187.7 billion yuan, up 3 percent over the previous year and mainly focusing on poverty-stricken rural areas.

In the same year, the central financial body allocated 19 billion yuan of nutrition subsidies (including 2.218 billion yuan of government awards and subsidies for local pilot projects) and a special fund of nearly 10 billion yuan for building student dining halls. By the end of 2013 some 32.45 million rural students receiving compulsory education were benefiting from the nutrition subsidy policy.

A total of 699 counties with contiguous poor areas (including 19 regiment-level entities of the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps) in 22 provincial-level administrative areas carried out pilot projects, covering 95,900 schools and benefiting 32 million students; 529 counties in 19 provincial-level administrative areas launched pilot projects, covering 39,800 schools and benefiting 10.02 million students. The central government appropriated 10 billion yuan to upgrade rural schools with poor compulsory education conditions, with the focus on supporting the central and western rural areas, regions inhabited by ethnic minorities and poverty-stricken areas in improving their compulsory education conditions.

The government allocated 16.5 billion yuan of funds from the central budget to support and lead the expansion of preschool educational resources in various regions, and to encourage the local governments to establish the preschool education financial assistance system so as to help impoverished children, orphans and disabled children receive preschool education; the government also provided 4.647 billion yuan of national grants to regular senior high schools, benefiting nearly 5 million students from poverty-stricken households; secondary vocational education was made free for all rural students, urban students whose majors are related to agriculture, and urban impoverished students, and the first- and second-grade students whose majors are related to agriculture or who are from impoverished households enjoy national grants. Thirty provinces (autonomous regions, municipalities directly under the central government) have released policies allowing the children of rural migrant workers who live in cities to take the local college entrance examinations, and 12 provinces and municipalities have started solving the problem.

The white paper is China's 11th report on human rights since the government began releasing such reports in 1991. The tenth report was released in 2013.