SCIO briefing on poverty alleviation and development

Xinhua News Agency:

I have two questions for Mr. Liu. The first one is about the relocation of 10 million impoverished people. Where will they move? Is there a specific number for this population? Which province will receive the majority of them?

My second question is about poverty alleviation in poverty-stricken counties. As far as I know, there are 592 key poverty-stricken counties in China, but in contiguous poverty-stricken areas, there are also 680 large counties. You mentioned removing the “poverty-stricken” title from all of them. Do you mean the 592 key counties only or the large counties as well?

Liu Yongfu:

10 million is not a rough estimation. The central government made the decision after full deliberation. We spent more than one year investigating the situation and have marked those who need to be relocated in their poverty alleviation files. So, the number is basically accurate. Of course, there will be errors. They will be discovered and corrected during practice. Now, we have established a relocation list and logged the names into our database.

As for your second question, the central authorities decided to tackle regional poverty, with both large counties and key counties included. There are 832 of them in all. As for regional poverty, let me explain it in this way. A large county may cover thousands of square kilometers of land, and its poverty should be considered a regional problem.

One more word on your first question, we’ve got the names of all the 10 million people to be relocated. Thank you.

People’s Daily:

My questions are related to those raised by the Xinhua News Agency. How can we understand the poverty reduction tasks set at the CPC Central Committee’s conference on poverty alleviation? You mentioned lifting all rural poor people out of poverty based on the current standard. Do you mean getting rid of poverty based on a specific standard during a specific period, or getting rid of poverty for good?

Mr. Liu just vowed great determination to achieve the tasks with no problems left unsolved. For those who indeed have difficulty in shaking off poverty, the government will use social security and basic living allowances to solve their problem. Do I understand correctly? In my opinion, the “Five Groups Project” suggested in the proposals for the 13th Five-Year Plan should be understood this way. For those who lose the ability to work completely or partially, social security will be used to help them get rid of poverty. But this will lead to a problem. If a group of people capable of working fail to get rid of poverty by 2020, will the government use social security and basic living allowances to solve their problem too? Is that inappropriate under the central authorities’ guidelines on poverty alleviation?

Also, what new ideas and measures do you have on eliminating regional poverty? Thank you.

Liu Yongfu:

The targeted group decided by the central authorities includes more than 70 million impoverished people. Their status is determined on the basis of the current standard, and their files have been created. This group of people has been selected and won’t change. But of course, in the next five years, there will be other people impoverished for various reasons, such as illness. They will also be included in the group, but the number will not be high.

As for people unable to work, they can also get rich under our policies. A case in point is the policy Madam Su Guoxia just mentioned. It encourages impoverished people to use their assets to shake off poverty. Under this policy, if you are a registered impoverished citizen unable to work but have lands and a roofed house and there are more than 1,100 hours of sunshine in the place where you live, you will enjoy our policy and have a 3,000-watt or 5,000 watt photovoltaic (PV) system built on your roof. When you sell the solar power to the government, the development of new energy will be boosted and the poverty issue will also be tackled. For another example, you can also make investments in the stock market with big investors under our policy. If you are unable to work, you still have assets and lands, so you can use these items to make investments.

As a result, it’s improper to say that the development-oriented poverty alleviation policies can’t solve the problem of people unable to work. The public used to think our policies were only for people able to work, and those unable to work wouldn’t be able to enjoy these policies. This is unfair. That’s all I want to say about the target of the poverty alleviation campaign.

As for regional poverty, we will adopt precise poverty alleviation and elimination measures for specific villages, households and people. We will create files for all of them and take actions accordingly. Meanwhile, we will develop measures to boost regional development. These two strategies are supplementary to each other. Getting rid of poverty by hard work involves only one person. Boosting economic and social developments will improve the general environment. The individuals’ problems will be solved and they will eventually get rich only once the general environment is changed.

We will continue to regard poverty-stricken regions as the essential targets of our campaign. We will continue to intensify infrastructure construction and improve public services in these regions. We will create an environment, in which the registered impoverished people can get rich through hard work. We are trying to help these people in every sense.

We will make sure that all our policies, funds and projects will benefit the needy and won’t be misused to build vanity projects or increase local government’s revenue. The ultimate goal of developing the economy is to bring real benefits to the poor. Thank you.