Su Jianjun, a poor farmer from northwest China's Gansu Province,
cast his potato votes into boxes marked respectively with "road",
"terrace", "technique training", and "radio and TV", items he
thought could help pull him out of poverty and most need the
government's help.
"Now I'm more confident that I'll be out of poverty since I myself
have a say in making anti-poverty plans," Su said.
Together with his fellow villagers in Jinping Village in Gansu, the
27-year-old man was implementing a new anti-poverty method under
the supervision of dozens of Chinese anti-poverty officials and
experts with the Asian Development
Bank (ADB) and the United Nations
Development Programme.
The villagers were first divided into groups where they brainstorm
around the concept of poverty and what it means to them.
By
voting with potatoes, representatives of the 316 families in the
village then chose to concentrate counter-poverty efforts on
building roads, making terraces, holding technical training
courses, and establishing radio and TV facilities.
"The core of the method is to kindle the poor's initiative by
letting them take part in decision-making," said Li Xiaoyun, an ADB
expert and professor of the Chinese Agriculture University. "This
represents a remarkable change in ways of aiding the poor in
China."
Lu
Feijie, head of the Anti-Poverty Office of China's State Council,
described the adoption of the new method as not only economically
important but also of political significance because the move
implies more democracy for farmers.
The world's most populous nation has waged a nationwide campaign to
combat poverty since the founding of the People's Republic of China
in 1949, and has upgraded the campaign since itsreforms and
opening-up in the late 1970s.
Official statistics indicate that the number of the poor in the
country decreased to 30 million in 2000 from 250 million in 1978
and that the impoverished rate declined to some three percent from
30.7 percent in rural areas.
The central government has set the goal of lifting the remaining 30
million impoverished people out of poverty in the 10 years to come
while preventing those just out of poverty from falling into
poverty again.
However, problems like low efficiency in carrying out poverty
reducing programs have been existing over the last years, when the
government has taken care of almost everything, from deciding who
were poor, why they were poor to how to lift them out of
poverty.
"More powerful methods must be developed to knock the nuts in
poverty fighting, for the remaining poverty-stricken people are
usually in an extremely difficult situation," said Xu Jin, head of
the Gansu Provincial Anti-Poverty Office, citing bad natural
conditions, lack of infrastructure and illiteracy.
After drawing experience from the World Bank and a number of
other countries, China began to experiment with the new method in
north China's Hebei Province, south China's Guangxi Zhuang
Autonomous Region and some other areas several years ago and has
since made much progress.
The Anti-Poverty Office of the State Council has endorsed the
renovated method and is introducing it to other parts of the
nation.
Training courses are being held in Gansu to get all poverty-relief
officials across the country familiar with the method.
(
November 16, 2001)