Poverty alleviation in severely impoverished areas and targeted poverty alleviation are deepening

The path out of poverty toward prosperity for nearly 100 million poor compatriots has always weighed on the hearts of the people across the country. In 2014, China continued to increase investment and support for poor areas, reformed the poverty alleviation mechanism, advanced targeted poverty alleviation, and achieved notable progress in the cause of poverty alleviation and development.

Poverty alleviation in contiguous severely impoverished areas enhances follow-up development capacity

In 2014, all localities and departments continued to increase investment in contiguous severely impoverished areas, went all out to improve the backward conditions of poor areas, and enhanced follow-up development capacity:

-- The Ministry of Transport allocated more than 155 billion yuan to support the reconstruction and construction of 31,700 km of expressways and ordinary national and provincial roads and 96,000 km of rural roads in 14 areas, and 138 "cableway-to-bridge" projects, resolving road access problems for 93 townships and 10,500 administrative villages in the areas;

-- The National Development and Reform Commission and the Ministry of Water Resources allocated 12.5 billion yuan to support 19 million rural residents and 2.85 million rural school teachers and students in poor areas in resolving drinking water safety problems;

-- The Ministry of Education allocated 31 billion yuan to improve the basic operating conditions of weak compulsory education schools in poor areas, ensuring that 40 million students in the compulsory education stage in poor areas can eat a nutritious meal every day;

-- The National Health and Family Planning Commission and other units allocated 19.85 billion yuan in central special investment to support the infrastructure construction of 47,000 health and family planning institutions in poor areas;

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At the same time, special poverty alleviation fund investment also maintained rapid growth, delivering "life-saving money" and a "booster" for development to the poor. In 2014, the central government allocated 43.3 billion yuan in special poverty alleviation funds, an increase of 10 percent over the previous year. The provincial-level fiscal budgets of 28 provinces arranged 26.5 billion yuan in poverty alleviation funds, an increase of 27.3 percent over the previous year.

Mechanism reform stimulates vitality, poverty alleviation projects "bloom in a hundred flowers"

In recent years, all localities have formulated poverty alleviation policies based on the actual conditions of local resources and starting from the needs of the poor, and poverty alleviation projects have "bloomed in a hundred flowers," radiating boundless vitality:

-- Longnan in Gansu, where information was blocked and transportation was poor, caught the express train of the "information superhighway," and in the past more than a year more than 5,000 online stores have risen, with poor farmers embarking on the path out of poverty toward prosperity in the information age;

-- Shaanxi province organized poverty alleviation relocation projects for poor farmer households living in areas without basic production and living conditions, arranging relocation for 114,300 households and 423,500 people, fundamentally "pulling out the roots of poverty";

-- Guangdong and Guangxi carried out a pilot pairing assistance vocational education collaboration, using Guangdong's high-quality educational resources to train the newly growing labor force of Guangxi's poor areas in another place;

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The innovative vitality emerging at the grassroots level is inseparable from the reform and innovation of the poverty alleviation mechanism. For a long time, party and government leading cadres in China's poor areas were bound by GDP assessment. In 2014, the "Opinions on Improving the Assessment of the Economic and Social Development Performance of Party and Government Leading Bodies and Leading Cadres in Poor Counties" was formally issued, guiding poor counties to focus their work on poverty alleviation and development. Some provinces and municipalities also issued measures for assessing poverty alleviation work, taking raising the living standards of the poor population and reducing the number of poor people as the main indicators, effectively stimulating the vitality and impetus of the grassroots in advancing poverty alleviation and development.

At the same time, the State Council Leading Group Office of Poverty Alleviation and Development and other departments also formulated the "Opinions on Reforming the Management Mechanism of Special Fiscal Poverty Alleviation Funds," establishing a results-oriented fund allocation mechanism, delegating project approval authority in principle to the county level, strengthening the supervisory responsibility of provincial and municipal governments, advancing third-party supervision and the participation of poverty alleviation targets in management, and making the use of poverty alleviation funds more precise and reasonable.

Establishing exclusive poverty archives, focusing efforts precisely to "break through" one by one

In poverty alleviation and development, how can assistance reach the "point" and reach the "root"? In 2014, China comprehensively advanced the work of poverty identification and registration and file establishment, laying a solid foundation for the targeted poverty alleviation strategy.

Liu Yongfu, director of the State Council Leading Group Office of Poverty Alleviation and Development, introduced that the registration and file establishment work for poor households was the "No. 1 project" of poverty alleviation and development work in 2014. As of now, the registration and file establishment work has been fully completed, and the whole country has identified 128,000 poor villages and more than 88 million poor people, which have been entered into the poverty alleviation business management system for standardized management and dynamic adjustment.

On this basis, all localities, in conjunction with the second batch of the party's mass line education and practice activities, comprehensively deployed the work of sending cadres to villages to assist, offering ideas and finding ways for the poor to escape poverty and become prosperous. According to statistics, all localities have so far dispatched 125,000 work teams to poor villages, with 430,000 dispatched cadres, basically achieving full coverage of poor villages.

The State Council Leading Group Office of Poverty Alleviation and Development also made cadres stationed in villages to assist, vocational education and training, microcredit for poverty alleviation, relocation for poverty alleviation, e-commerce poverty alleviation, tourism poverty alleviation, photovoltaic poverty alleviation, entrepreneurship training for prosperity leaders, and driving by leading enterprises the ten projects of targeted poverty alleviation, encouraging all localities to take the poverty alleviation needs of the masses as the first signal, identify paths out of poverty, formulate development plans, and adapt measures to local conditions, village conditions, and household conditions.

"In 2014, breakthroughs were made in innovation of the poverty alleviation and development mechanism, key work was comprehensively carried out, area plans were smoothly implemented, and social poverty alleviation opened up new prospects. The goal of reducing more than 10 million poor people for the whole year can be achieved," said Liu Yongfu.