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

FINDING WAYS

To wipe out poverty, the Chinese government not only set a multi-year timetable, but also created different policies for different regions according to their needs, including developing business, relocating the impoverished, compensating peasants in ecologically fragile areas, promoting education and improving social security.

Governments at all levels have established special departments or leading groups on anti-poverty efforts, increased budgets earmarked for poverty reduction and ordered economically developed regions and big cities on the eastern coast to help underdeveloped regions in central and western China.

Moreover, special teams consisting of more than half a million officials, scientists, engineers and entrepreneurs are being sent to impoverished villages to alleviate poverty with their knowledge and resources.

To Kong and 700-plus villagers at Yangxiedi, building a bridge has become urgent for local people eager to get rid of poverty.

Previously, there was no road directly linking the village with the outside world; villagers had to cross a river valley then walk a long way uphill to the nearest township. When the rain season came and the river rose, villagers were stranded in the mountains.

With help from Kong, local villagers now have the funds from the government for the construction of the new bridge they have long hoped for.

"It will not only be a bridge connecting the village with the outside world, but a bridge from poverty to a Xiaokang society as well," Kong said.