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.
The pledge by Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi to “work, work, work, work and work” for her country has been named the catchphrase of the year, recognizing the effort Japan’s first female leader had to make to reach the top. Takaichi uttered the phrase in October when she was elected as head of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP). Many were initially as worried about her work ethic as supportive of her enthusiasm. In a country notorious for long working hours, especially for working women who are also burdened with homemaking and caregiving, overwork is a sensitive topic. The recognition triggered a
‘HEART IS ACHING’: Lee appeared to baffle many when he said he had never heard of six South Koreans being held in North Korea, drawing criticism from the families South Korean President Lee Jae-myung yesterday said he was weighing a possible apology to North Korea over suspicions that his ousted conservative predecessor intentionally sought to raise military tensions between the war-divided rivals in the buildup to his brief martial law declaration in December last year. Speaking to reporters on the first anniversary of imprisoned former South Korean president Yoon Suk-yeol’s ill-fated power grab, Lee — a liberal who won a snap presidential election following Yoon’s removal from office in April — stressed his desire to repair ties with Pyongyang. A special prosecutor last month indicted Yoon and two of his top
The Philippines deferred the awarding of a project that is part of a plan to build one of the world’s longest marine bridges after local opposition over the potential involvement of a Chinese company due to national security fears. The proposals are “undergoing thorough review” by the Asian Development Bank (ADB), which acts as a lender and an overseer of the project to ensure it meets international environmental and governance standards, the Philippine Department of Public Works and Highways said in a statement on Monday in response to queries from Bloomberg. The agency said it would announce the winning bidder once ADB
IN ABSENTIA: The MP for Hampstead and Highgate in London, a niece of deposed Bangladesh prime minister Sheik Hasina, condemned the ‘flawed and farcical’ trial A court in Bangladesh yesterday sentenced British Member of Parliament Tulip Siddiq to two years in jail after a judge ruled she was complicit in corrupt land deals with her aunt, the country’s deposed prime minister Sheikh Hasina. A judge found Siddiq, the Labour MP for Hampstead and Highgate, guilty of misusing her “special influence” as a British politician to coerce Hasina into giving valuable pieces of land to her mother, brother and sister. Siddiq’s mother, Sheikh Rehana, was given seven years in prison and considered the prime participant in the case. The trial had been carried out in absentia: Neither Hasina, Siddiq,
RSS