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Li Guozhang, who is an advisor to the Chinese People's Political
Consultative Conference (CPPCC) and deputy director of the Western
Development Academe of Lanzhou University, said it is vital that 30
million poverty-stricken farmers are helped if China is to become a
stable and affluent society.
Li
said that the strategic objective to resolve rural poverty has been
basically realized since the foundation of the state and
particularly since the implementation of the 8th five-year
poverty-relief plan, but there are still 30 million rural farmers
living with poverty, "Most of them spread in 125 underdeveloped
counties of six western provinces and regions like Gansu, Guizhou,
Yunnan, Shanxi, Shaanxi and Xinjiang," he added.
After exhaustive analysis on poor distribution in China, covering
2,300 counties and 587 under-developed counties, he discovered that
a distinct feature of poverty concentrated areas was that although
they were being helped by the government the longest, they were the
last to get out of poverty themselves; while some were living in
conditions of abject poverty, the majority were what he described
as 'food and cloth needy.'
In
order to solve this problem, the central government has been
pouring funding and developing policies in the regions for several
decades. Li has attempted to address this question of why 30
million poor can't be helped out of poverty?: first, the natural
resource is poor and economic foundations very underdeveloped;
second, it has an underdeveloped economic system with poor
executive control and limited capacity for changing methods; third,
it has had poor economic growth and development; fourth, the
inappropriate measures put forward by poverty relief agents in
local government have affected its development.
As
poverty relief must be a key to development, and the assistance of
30 million poor being a stage in that development, the answers to
this problem need addressing. Li has put forward some ideas: one,
to initiate new principles on poverty relief in order to assist
development at a regional macro level, rather than addressing
individual cases; second, to stimulate a specialized 'stage' relief
program based on poor distribution and conditions; third, to
implement development through financial management policies and
successful economic production planning techniques; forth, to
improve local internal/government qualifications, public
administrative systems, population quantity and non-technological
investment suitable for the needs of local development.
(China.org.cn by Wang Zhiyong March 11, 2003)
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