Beijing: China, the world's second largest economy, has identified about 1.28 lakh impoverished villages with 92 million people living in poverty. Liu Yongfu, head of the State Council leading group office of poverty alleviation and development, said though the poverty has declined substantially in China, the country still has s 832 poor counties and districts.
In October Zheng Wenkai, a vice-minister who heads the office of Poverty Alleviation and Development (PAD), said that over 82 million people officially remained below poverty under China's one USD a day formula but the numbers could scale up to 200 million if World Bank's standard of USD 1.25 a day is employed.
He had said poverty is still a salient problem in China despite the economic rise. According to the data released by PAD, in the last three decades over 600 million people have moved out of poverty. Liu told a seminar in central China's Hubei Province that about 116,600 work teams with 466,000 cadres were dispatched to the villages for poverty alleviation.
"Almost all underprivileged households have a cadre responsible for poverty alleviation work," state-run Xinhua news agency quoted him as saying. He said more work should be done to improve people's lives in poor areas in all respects, including education, finance and housing. He said China will help about 500 impoverished villages through tourism next year.
Li Jinzao, head of the China's national tourism administration who attended the seminar, said so far more than eight million people have been brought out of poverty by developing tourism. Along with overall GDP growth targets, the government is focused on raising the income of the population with a goal to double per capita income from the 2010 level by 2020.
To expand the safety net for those in poverty, the national poverty line was increased from 206 yuan in 1986 to 2,300 yuan per annum in 2011 (USD 33.5 to USD 374), the report said.
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