Poverty alleviation with transportation infrastructure

An executive meeting of the State Council, China's Cabinet, on April 21 advanced the goal of building a broad-covered, well-connected and high quality transportation network by 2020 to help improve the economic situation in impoverished areas and people's capacity to lift themselves out of poverty.

According to officials from the Ministry of Transport, the central authority has completed a transportation poverty relief plan, which makes significant adjustments to transport policies.

Besides the 14 extraordinary poverty-stricken regions listed in the 12th Five-Year Plan (2010-15), many national key poverty relief counties, minority inhabited regions and border areas have also been included into the transportation poverty relief for the 13th Five-Year Plan (2016-20) period.

The five years of the 13th plan are a key period for China's transport infrastructure construction. The State Council also advanced at the meeting constructing 1 million kilometers of rural roads and completing 100 "backbone" transportation projects including highways, railways and airports.