SCIO briefing on poverty alleviation and development

China Daily:

Recently, the Central Poverty Alleviation and Development Work Conference was held in Beijing, which revealed a series of work deployment initiatives on poverty alleviation. What were the key contents? Thank you!

Su Guoxia:

The Central Poverty Alleviation and Development Work Conference was the first central conference held after the 5th Plenary Session of 18th CPC Central Committee. It is also the first meeting that gathered the main leaders from 31 provincial party committees and governments after the 5th Plenary Session of 18th CPC Central Committee, showing the strong ambitions of the central government to win the battle of poverty alleviation. You may have noticed that our idea now has changed from poverty alleviation through development to bringing people out of poverty, which shows our determination. Talking of the most important characteristics involves three aspects.

First, as it was repeated by Mr. Liu, we should give play to our political advantage and encourage governments of all levels to carry out their due responsibilities. The main responsible officials in Central and Western China were asked for the first time to sign a liability statement, which was then showed to the media during the conference. We want to establish a comprehensive assessment system. This is our most important baton.

Second, the central government took out money to form a force for poverty alleviation. If you've seen the Decision that was showed to the public, you would be impressed with its length. The whole document contains 8 parts, with 33 clauses, and is 10,000 words in total. Our policy this time has adapted to the length of the Decision, which features fantastic content. For example, from the perspective of financial input, the document requires that local government's financial investments should match the central government's determination to win the poverty alleviation war. According to preliminary understandings, the central government and provincial governments will make significant increases in 2016. Another example you may have noticed, is that the document plans to innovate the investment and financing mechanism for poverty alleviation and support the poverty alleviation relocation project. This represents 600 billion yuan in five years. Among the innovative financing mechanisms of the government, agriculture-related investment accounted for the majority. In addition, according to the document, it will set up financing program for poverty alleviation, which will offer a better discount than would ordinary refinancing support for agriculture. Additionally, we will promote large scale poverty reduction through more direct to home micro credit than before. This time, our country needs large amounts of money to win the fight with poverty alleviation. To quote an old phrase,"proper preparations should be made in advance.” The document has clearly defined the investment.

Su Guoxia:

Third, the document has embodied the central government’s reform and innovation ideas. We've made lots of innovation in the mechanism systems and policies. For example, it is the first time that we have a "package" of ways to relieve poverty, such as the combined integration of poverty relief with ecological protection. We will transfer the poor who have been registered to ecological protection persons such as forest rangers. This is the implementation of the green development concept. We will transfer those who can't move and live in the ecologically fragile regions into workers who earn a salary, which is a huge innovation. Additionally, we are working to relieve poverty through asset yields and will give them the money in full and let them benefit for a long time by transferring it into assets. Many government policies, such as the poverty alleviation through promotion of photovoltaic industryand tourism project, have relieved poverty by transferring the government's investment into assets of the poor. Another example is "Internet+", which has provided many opportunities including an e-commerce poverty alleviation project that we have been implementing. Furthermore, in the past, people living near cities benefited more from the land policies of poverty development. Nowadays, we will provide more benefits for the poor in land appreciation. All of these policies are innovative ideas. After the Third Plenary Session of the 18th CPC Central Committee, the development of the country gave more opportunities to the poor. I was listing just several examples. The document has so much content, strength and so many effective measures, which has indeed realized the requirements of President Xi Jinping. Thank you very much.

Liu Yongfu:

I'd like to supply two additional examples. Among China’s 70 million poor people, 10 million will move to other places for poverty alleviation. What is the significance of this? Most of those people are living in those rural areas with poor ecological environments and inconvenient traffic conditions. Reducing poverty in those areas will affect local ecological construction, which is costly and will also bring in many difficulties. According to statistics, there are only 87 countries and regions across the world have a population of over 10 million. Although China has moved six million people before, and moved 1.2 million people during the Three Gorges Reservoir construction, only 500,000 to 600,000 of them are rural people, while the rest are members of the urban population. This time, we are trying to move 10 million rural people in the next five years, which involves a range of work. The Chinese central government has decided to invest some 600 billion yuan on this issue. You can imagine the difficulty and the government’s determination.

The central government has made a decision to increase the intensity of support surrounding the photovoltaic poverty alleviation project which Director Su Guoxia mentioned above. Now, we have invested more than 10 billion yuan to deliver 1.83 million kW of electricity by grid-connected village power stations and freight systems. Hundreds of thousands of impoverished people have benefited from it. Their annual income has been increased to more than 3000 yuan thanks to the project. It is a successful experiment. It will need at least 1 trillion or perhaps trillions of yuan if all things are settled. That's all I want to say.