"We villagers now can drink clean tap water as urban residents
do," said Zhao Caihong, with a broad smile on her face. "We used to
fetch water from rivers that were often contaminated with the
livestock's excrement and urine."
Zhao is also happy and contented that her family moved last year
from an old shanty into a big new one, benefiting from a
government-funded house renovation project.
Zhao and some 250 other families live in an outlying mountain
village called Shangping, in Xihaigu region, the poorest part of
northwest China's underdeveloped Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region.
One year ago, much like so many other poverty-stricken villages
in the country, it still suffered from low family incomes, poor
transportation conditions and a shortage of clean drinking
water.
However, things have begun changing as the government focuses
more on the vast rural areas.
"Last year alone the government poured 1.2 million yuan (about
US$150,000) into improving our infrastructure and training and
encouraging villagers to find jobs in cities," said Wang Dianzhong,
head of the village committee.
The village used part of the funds to build a new dirt road,
which winds through surrounding mountains to the outside world.
Families with televisions can watch eight channels of programs
since microwave antennae were installed in their homes.
Shangping, like other outlying and poor villages across the
country, is beginning to share the outcome of China's galloping
growth.
As the most populous developing country, China has most of its
impoverished population concentrated in the rural areas. Since
1978, the Chinese government has moved away from a planned economy
and pushed market reforms, as well as liberalizing the rural
economy, raising rural productivity and alleviating widespread
poverty through the household responsibility system.
Furthermore, in the mid-1980s the Chinese government started
systematic, mass poverty reduction and development efforts. As a
result, the number of impoverished people without adequate food and
clothing declined from 250 million in 1978 to 23.6 million at the
end of 2005, with the share of the population living in poverty
falling from 30 percent to less than three percent. China has
achieved the first Millennium Development Goal of the United
Nations well ahead of the target date of 2015.
"In the pursuit of poverty alleviation and development, China
has charted its own path, suitable for its own conditions. This
path involves government leadership, social participation,
self-reliance, an orientation toward economic development, and an
integrated development approach," said Liu Jian, director of the
State Council Leading Group Office of Poverty Alleviation and
Development.
In addition to incorporating poverty alleviation and development
into overall economic and social strategies, the Chinese government
has increased budgetary allocations for poverty alleviation.
Between 1986 and 2004, the total budget support allocated reached
112.6 billion yuan (US$14 billion), and subsidized loans reached
162 billion yuan (US$20 billion).
In 2005 the budgetary support for poverty alleviation totaled 13
billion yuan. To ensure that budgetary poverty funds reach the
designated impoverished farmers, the use of funds is to be
proclaimed, published, or reimbursed, adding transparency and
public supervision.
In addition to government efforts, China has taken a number of
steps to mobilize and organize people in all walks of life,
including in the eastern coastal provinces and in multi-level party
and government organs, to join the development and construction
effort in poverty-stricken regions.
The government has organized 15 eastern provinces and
municipalities to support development in 11 corresponding
poverty-stricken provinces, autonomous regions and cities in
western regions. It has organized 116 central party and government
organs and 156 large state firms to help and support 481 key
targeted counties. And it has organized all social sectors to
participate in the process of closing the country's yawning income
gap.
The Glorious Enterprise program encourages private firms to
invest in impoverished areas. The Hope Project organized by the
Communist Youth League Central Committee sponsors children in poor
households to finish compulsory education. The non-communist
parties in the country organized the Knowledge-oriented Poverty
Alleviation Program, utilizing their own advantages to help poor
regions extend practical technologies. The Happiness Project
organized by the Chinese Population Foundation sponsors poor
mothers, and the Women-oriented Poverty Alleviation Program
organized by the All-China Women's Federation aims to increase
women's income.
From December 2005 to February this year, the China Foundation
for Poverty Alleviation (CFPA), the largest of its kind in the
country for poverty relief, invited bids from 10 Chinese and
foreign NGOs for implementing a village-level poverty alleviation
project in 22 key poverty-stricken villages of east China's Jiangxi Province, under the entrustment of
Jiangxi Provincial Poverty Alleviation and Development Office.
Six NGOs were chosen in April 2006. They were Heifer Project
International from the United States, Jiangxi Provincial
Association Promoting Mountain-River-Lake Regional Sustainable
Development, Jiangxi Youth Development Foundation, the Ningxia
Center for Poverty Alleviation and Environment Improvement, China
Association for NGO Cooperation and Research Association for Women
and Family.
Under the scenario, the State Council Leading Group Office of
Poverty Alleviation and Jiangxi Provincial Poverty Alleviation and
Development Office will provide a budgetary allocation of 11
million yuan (US$1.35 million) to the six NGOs for implementing the
project in six townships in the counties of Le'an, Xingguo and
Ningdu in Jiangxi Province. Each village is to gain access to
500,000 yuan. The project is scheduled to complete in 2007.
Farmers who are accustomed to government-sponsored poverty
relief are amazed at the new mode. "NGOs are different from
government projects in poverty relief. NGO workers would come to
our homes and talk patiently on everything with each of us," said
Dong Xiaoping, a farmer with Liukeng Village in Le'an County.
"If we succeed in accomplishing the project, we may find a way
to improve the management mechanism of domestic poverty reduction
funds and promote the subsistence and development of domestic
NGOs," said Duan Yingbi, president of the CFPA.
With assistance from government and all walks of life, China
also highlights the approach for poverty relief -- to support poor
people and encourage them to overcome the common attitude of "wait,
depend on, and ask" and establish a spirit of self-reliance and
hard work, said Liu Jian.
Despite tremendous success in poverty alleviation in recent
decades, China is now confronted with poverty issues in relatively
remote areas that are generally beyond the effective reach of
government programs.
"In the future, China will continue to relieve poverty in the
model of developing the whole village together, which means taking
one poor village as a unit and tackling the problems one by one,
and ensuring that the allocated money is really spent on the
needy," said Wang Guoliang, deputy director of the Office of
Poverty Relief under the State Council, or the central
government.
For this purpose, China is testing a new approach to poverty
reduction for 100,000 poor farmers in 60 administrative villages in
Shaanxi and Sichuan provinces, and in Guangxi and Inner Mongolia autonomous regions.
On June 1, 2006, the State Council Leading Group Office of
Poverty Alleviation and Development and the World Bank jointly
launched a two-year, US$8 million pilot program that promotes
stronger village involvement in how development funds are used in
their communities.
The pilot program, known as the Community-Driven Development
Program (CDDP), is expected to improve the targeting of poverty
alleviation funds, by allowing poor people to manage funds in
pursuit of their own priorities, according to the World Bank.
Participating poor communities will be given responsibility to
manage program funds and implement small-scale infrastructure and
public service improvements, the bank's China mission said.
"This CDDP pilot will promote more participation from villagers
in project planning and implementation and encourage new ways for
local governments to provide services to poor areas and poor
people," Wang Guoliang said.
Under the pilot program, the 60 participating administrative
villages will receive grants that are intended to be used to
improve living conditions and incomes. Within each administrative
village, smaller village units will compete for access to program
grants through a participatory process.
The pilot program, modeled in part on other community-driven
development programs operating elsewhere in Asia by the World Bank,
is expected to cost 64 million yuan (US$8 million).
"If successful, the program could be implemented nationally and
help millions of villagers make their own decisions on grassroots
economic and social development. And aspects of the program that
prove successful could potentially be integrated into China's
Village Development Planning Program," said Wang Guoliang.
Initiated in 2001, the
whole-village-toward-poverty-alleviation-and-development program
has operated throughout China in 148,000 officially designated poor
villages. They are home to some 80 percent of the country's
impoverished people. Each year, the country focuses on improving
production and living conditions in key villages. In four years, by
2010, China will fundamentally change the impoverished appearance
of those villages.
(Xinhua News Agency October 6, 2006)