Xinhua Insight: Eradicating poverty: Chinese bring millennia-old vision to reality

BINDING PROMISE

Last year, the Chinese central and provincial governments allocated more than 100 billion yuan in special funds to help 12.4 million rural poor out of poverty. Another 100 billion yuan is available this year to lift an additional 10 million people out of poverty.

China set its current poverty line at an annual average net income of 2,300 yuan per capita based in real terms in 2010. The nominal poverty lines has since been adjusted according to inflation.

To realize a "Xiaokang" society by 2020, China must lift 43 million people, almost equivalent to the population of Argentina, out of poverty in just four years, about 30,000 people a day.

For a country with over 1.3 billion people, the challenge is so high that governments at all levels have listed eradicating poverty as their top priority during the 13th Five-year Plan (2016-2020).

Chief officials and leading cadres from top to bottom have signed letters of responsibility, vowing to win the battle against poverty with considerable use of time, human resources and finance.

"Eradicating poverty is like a war and a historic mission that we must accomplish," said Jiao Lin, Party secretary of Luquan County in Yunnan, home to about 3.6 million rural people in poverty. "I come to win the war, with no retreat."

Located in mountainous areas, Luquan has been one of China's poorest counties for the past 31 years. Now it is one of the main battle fields in the country's fight against poverty, along with other revolutionary bases, ethnic minorities regions and border areas.

Once a veteran, Jiao now has to take on responsibility to lead the county's rural impoverished out of poverty by 2020.