Fan Meipeng, a 52-year-old farmer from a poverty-stricken county in central China's Anhui Province, never dreamed he could earn over 200,000 yuan (US$29,411.76) last year.

Just two years ago, his annual income was around 10,000 yuan, barely enough for his family to scrape through.

"I never thought I could make so much money in my life. I thank the government for helping me shake off poverty," Fan said.

Fan and his fellow villagers used to make a living growing rice in the low-lying areas by the Huai River. But excessive reclamation resulted in floods and damaged the environment.

In a bid to increase farmers' incomes and protect the fragile ecological environment, the local government gave subsidies to those farmers who built sandbanks to protect the farms, as well as installed biogas production units and planted vegetables.

Fan now runs an effective and environment-friendly farm, with 600 pigs, four pig-manure biogas units and several hectares of vegetables.

"My life keeps getting better and better. I hope the central government will continue to come up with new strategies to improve people's livelihood," Fan said.

Fan's example is one of many resulting from China's push to adjust the country's economic development pattern, which currently relies too much on investment and exports.

The global economic crisis has highlighted the urgency to transform China's development pattern to promote sound and fast economic and social development.

Chinese President Hu Jintao said on February 3 that "on the surface, the global financial crisis impacted on the speed of China's economic growth, but in essence it was the economic growth pattern that was worst hit."

Increasing farmers' income is key to boosting domestic consumption to advance the transformation of the growth pattern as China has a rural population of 720 million and farmers' purchasing power remains weak due to relatively low income and lack of a sound social security system.

The central government announced on January 31, 2010 to offer subsidies to farmers to increase output of grain, potato, highland barley and peanuts as well as to buy new agricultural machinery and construction materials.

Southern China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region earmarked one billion yuan last year to help three million migrant workers find employment again and 83,000 start their own businesses.

To further improve people's livelihood, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao pledged to build five million affordable houses and reconstruct two million substandard ones this year.

Sun Ziduo, head of the Institute of Economics under Anhui Provincial Academy of Social Sciences, said: "such government moves will not only improve people's well-being, but also boost domestic demand and accelerate transformation of the growth pattern and help maintain social stability."

He also said China should speed up development of the social security net, the fourth driving force of economic growth after investment, exports and domestic consumption.

Wang Kaiyu, a senior researcher with Anhui Provincial Academy of Social Sciences, said: "a sound social security system could help decrease 'precautionary savings' and boost domestic consumption."

The nationwide rural basic living guarantee system was completed in 2007, benefiting 42.91 million people as of 2008.

(Xinhua News Agency March 3, 2010)