The country's 22 underpopulated ethnic groups will benefit from a new round of poverty alleviation reforms with financial aid totaling up to 1 billion yuan (US$123.46 million) in the next five years.

Officials from the State Ethnic Affairs Commission made the statement at a two-day working conference of the State Council on the development of underpopulated ethnic groups, which ended yesterday in Beijing.

The program will start next year with priority given to infrastructure construction, including water conservation, power grids, roads, and other public undertakings such as education, sanitation and culture, said Yang Jianqiang, vice minister of the commission.

The decision follows the adoption of a development plan in May by the State Council, which indicated that poverty remained an "outstanding issue" for these ethnic groups.

Official figures indicate that the population of each of the 22 ethnic groups is below 100,000, and that they total only about 630,000 -- less than 0.05 percent of the country's population.

Most of the ethnic groups are located in remote provinces or autonomous regions, including Xinjiang, Tibet, Inner Mongolia and Yunnan.

The commission acknowledged that the economic development level of the 22 ethnic groups lags far behind the country's average, and they cited unfavorable natural conditions as the main reason.

"Many ethnic villages still lack power, highways, primary schools, clinics and even drinkable water," Yang said, noting that one-fourth of the population of the 22 groups still suffer from inadequate food and clothing supply.

Therefore, after poverty alleviation, it is expected that by 2010, the living conditions of the 22 groups might reach the average level of the locality, according to the development plan.

Dalelhan Abelajan, head of the Tatar Village in Qitai County, northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, said these policies will speed up the development of the Tatar minority.

The Tatar minority have a population of 5,000, most of them scattered in Xinjiang.

(China Daily August 31, 2005)