Lawmakers Call for More Efforts in Poverty Alleviation

Lawmakers and political advisors have called for various efforts for poverty alleviation, including stipulation of dedicated law and coordinated efforts in different fields.

A dedicated law for poverty alleviation and development will help shorten the time for the people in the less-developed areas to share the fruits of development, said Lu Zhiming, deputy to the National People's Congress (NPC), the country's top legislature, and vice governor of southwestern Guizhou Province, one of China's poorest regions.

Although great achievements in poverty alleviation have been made, there is still room for improvement, Lu added.

"We need to make studies and enact the poverty relief and development law, rather than staying in the policy level as before," said Lu.

Although China is now the world's second largest economy after the United States, it has long suffered from imbalanced development between its coastal and inland areas.

According to Lu, more than 15.2 million people are under the revised poverty line in Guizhou with a population of over 30 million, and more than 1.5 million people need to be relocated as soon as possible for reason of poverty relief.

Fortunately, recently the government has been paying more attention to poverty alleviation. China last year set a new poverty line at 2,300 yuan (US$365), an increase of 92 percent from that of 2009.

A total of 128 million citizens are covered by the government's poverty reduction program at the end of 2011, including 13.4 percent of the total rural residents, according to Fan Xiaojian, a member of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, the political advisory body, and head of the Poverty Alleviation Office of the State Council, the Cabinet.

In his report on government work delivered to the annual legislative session on March 5, Premier Wen Jiabao said the country will implement the 2011-2020 rural poverty alleviation and development program and, in accordance with the new national standards for poverty alleviation, do a good job of all poverty alleviation and development work.

According to the draft report on the central budget, the fund allocated to poverty relief maintains a sharp growth, as the special fund for poverty relief fund reaches 37.3 billion yuan (US$59.2 billion), with an increase of 18.7 percent.

"As a deputy from the grassroots, I deeply feel the country's policies favorable for the people's livelihood," said Zhang Liansheng, an NPC deputy from Fujian province, adding that many farmers have been lifted out of poverty by policies in fields of housing projects, grain subsidies and social security.

According to the program Wen mentioned in the report, 11 mountainous regions across the country, and the Tibetan-populated areas in provinces of Sichuan, Yunnan, Gansu and Qinghai, and southern Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region, will be the major areas for poverty alleviation work in the next decade.

"Not only (do we need to) relieve poverty, but more importantly, we need to develop," said Cao Lili, an NPC deputy and director of civil affairs bureau from the northwestern Shaanxi province. "Poverty alleviation is a comprehensive project, which includes education, health care, and others."

Cao called for addressing problems by making specific analysis in alleviating poverty in different areas, for different people, so that the efforts can be practical.