More than 200,000 people in drought-plagued Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region in northwest China will be resettled by 2011, under a new local government plan.

The government aims to move 217,400 peasants from 543 villages in seven counties in the central part of the region, where there are about three million impoverished rural inhabitants with an annual per capita income of less than 1,000 yuan (US$131).

"The existing 20 resettlement areas can't accommodate more people. We are developing five or six new areas this year to resettle several thousand people, and more are planned in the next four years," said Zhang Minjian, a senior engineer with the development and reform commission of Ningxia.

The scheme, starting this year, would cost 1.84 billion yuan (US$24 million), Zhang said.

Ningxia's resettlement project began in 1983 and to date about 300,000 people have been moved to irrigated and reclaimed areas.

Jiao Guotang, a farmer from Xiji County, Guyuan City, was among the new settlers to Hongsibao, a major resettlement area along the Yellow River, about 160 km south of the regional capital Yinchuan and more than 200 km from his home village Jiaowan.

Jiao and his family moved to their new home earlier this year. He said the crops were growing well as the land was fertile and irrigated.

Drought is the main cause of poverty in central Ningxia as the area receives less than 300 mm of rainfall each year. More than 70 percent of its two million inhabitants were living under the poverty line in the mid-1980s. The harsh living conditions have put the area on UNESCO's list of most unlivable places on earth.

"To help farmers move out of their barren homeland is only the initial step of our poverty-elimination efforts. We will invite agricultural experts and teach farmers scientific agricultural methods," Zhang said.

(Xinhua News Agency August 24, 2007)