China, fighting to stamp out poverty, this year plans to move more than 2 million of its poorest citizens from remote, inland regions to more developed areas, Chinese State Council official Liu Yongfu (劉永富) said yesterday.
The mass relocation of people is a strategy targeted at lifting 10 million citizens out of poverty by 2020, Xinhua news agency said.
Some of the villagers would move to areas with better social services, such as schools and hospitals, while others in remote areas would move to places with better roads and water supply, Liu Yongfu told a news conference.
The numbers would be stepped up gradually and might eventually hit 3 million, added Liu, who heads the State Council’s Leading Group Office of Poverty Alleviation and Development.
“We will talk it over with the localities and accumulate some experience, after that we will increase step-by-step,” he said.
Despite two decades of rapid economic growth, poverty remains a huge issue in China, mainly in rural areas, where a lack of jobs drives out adults, leaving behind children and the elderly, often with limited access to schools and healthcare.
China’s poor, who make up about 5 percent of a population of nearly 1.4 billion, live mostly in the countryside and earn less than 2,300 yuan (US$353) per year, government and state media said.
In March, Chinese Premier Li Keqiang (李克強) promised a boost of 43 percent in funding for poverty relief programs.
In October last year, the State Council said China aimed to lift all its 70 million poor above the poverty line by 2020.
In December last year, Li urged local authorities to provide housing, healthcare, schooling and employment for relocated citizens.
Since kicking off market reforms in 1978, China has lifted more than 800 million people out of poverty, but it remains a developing country and the reforms are incomplete, the World Bank said.
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