How targeted poverty alleviation solves the problem of people competing to be recognized as poor households

Truly poor? "Competing to be poor"? —— The challenge of targeted poverty alleviation remains to be solved

In order to fulfill the national requirement of "truly alleviating poverty and helping the truly poor," Chongqing Municipality in recent years has provided targeted assistance to poor households through poverty identification, differentiated assistance, and dynamic management, improving the precision of poverty alleviation and changing the shortcomings of past poverty alleviation projects that "helped the strong but struggled to help the weak" and "built up big households." However, as "to-the-person, to-the-household" targeted poverty alleviation policies gradually increased, problems such as farmers "competing to be poor" and insufficient coordination and linkage among government departments' support policies became prominent.

Proposing "one-on-one" solutions targeting specific causes of poverty

Qingsong Village in Tonggu Town, Wushan County, Chongqing, sits at an altitude of nearly 1,000 m, with poor soil and a harsh ecological environment. Since 2007, more than 70 households of farmers with relatively better economic conditions have gradually moved away. But for poor household Yang Zhenyuan, relocation is a hope beyond reach. "I dream of moving out of the mountains, but my family only has just over 30,000 yuan in savings, not even enough to buy a house down the mountain. Any farmer on the mountain who could find a way has moved away. Dozens of mu of village land have been left fallow, becoming a kingdom of wild boars. At night you can hear the sound of wild boars rooting for food."

During interviews, many poor households reported a common problem: in areas such as poverty alleviation relocation and industrial development, some poverty alleviation measures "helped the strong but struggled to help the weak." Some poverty alleviation projects required farmers to contribute a great deal of money, so truly poor households "could not afford to enjoy" government subsidies; some poverty alleviation funds were even used to "build up big households," and poor households did not benefit.

"To solve the problems of low precision in poverty alleviation policies and 'helping the strong but struggling to help the weak,' Chongqing has explored 'to-the-person, to-the-household' poverty alleviation measures, proposing 'one-on-one' solutions targeting specific causes of poverty." Liu Gexin, director of the Chongqing Municipal Poverty Alleviation Office, said that the key to targeted poverty alleviation is to properly address questions such as "who are the poor," "what are the causes of poverty," "how to provide assistance targeting the causes of poverty," and "how effective is the assistance."

In order to truly implement the "to-the-person, to-the-household" poverty alleviation policy, Chongqing adopted a "three-step" approach: First, properly carry out "registration and filing" of poor households to achieve poverty identification. Relying on "registration and filing," information such as the names of poor households, family circumstances, and causes of poverty is recorded on file. Second, link poverty alleviation measures with the results of poverty identification and implement targeted poverty elimination measures. At present, Chongqing has established policies such as high-mountain ecological poverty alleviation relocation, subsidies for poor households to start micro-enterprises, and poverty alleviation microcredit, so that government poverty alleviation policies and funds can be delivered to poor households. Third, dynamic management. Timely tracking and monitoring of poverty alleviation measures and their implementation effects allow poor households that have steadily escaped poverty to exit in a timely manner, and poor targets that should be supported to be included in a timely manner.

Ten policies provide targeted assistance directly to individuals

During interviews, Ban Yue Tan reporters learned that Chongqing currently implements 10 "to-the-person, to-the-household" policies, mainly including industrial support funds directly subsidized to households through cash, in-kind goods, and share cooperation; living subsidies for students in secondary and higher vocational education and financial aid for children from extremely poor families attending university directly subsidized to the aided poor families through "one-card"; subsidy funds for skills training and entrepreneurship training directly subsidized to individuals; and subsidy funds for projects such as high-mountain ecological poverty alleviation relocation and rural tourism development directly issued to poor targets.

Taking the currently implemented high-mountain ecological poverty alleviation relocation as an example, centering on the goals of "relocating the poor" and "helping the poor," Chongqing implements a differentiated subsidy policy: on the basis of implementing the municipal-level subsidy of 8,000 yuan per person, some districts and counties give an additional preferential subsidy of 1,000 yuan to 2,000 yuan to poor people; the land department reduces or exempts land use fees for house construction by relocated households, and the poverty alleviation department provides a 5% microcredit interest subsidy for house construction and industrial development by poor relocated households. By "bundling" differentiated policies, the pressure of relocation funds is reduced, reversing the problem of poor households being "unable to afford to relocate and finding it hard to participate."

At the Mabao Mountain high-mountain relocation resettlement site in Gaoqiao Village, Nanchuan District, Chongqing, reporters saw that flowers and willow trees were planted in front of the relocated households' homes, the courtyards were clean and tidy, and public facilities such as a clinic, cultural room, and leisure square were all available. "In the past, the whole family lived on the high mountain. The house was made of adobe and leaked whenever it rained; for the children to go to school, it took two or three hours each way," said relocated household Liu Xiaohua. During relocation, the government subsidized more than 30,000 yuan, and together with compensation for reclaimed homestead land, the family spent only more than 40,000 yuan to move into a spacious and bright new house of 120 sq m, greatly improving their living conditions.

At the same time, in order to solve the problem of poverty alleviation funds "building up big households," Chongqing has also explored in some districts and counties converting industrial poverty alleviation funds into "quantified shares allocated to households," enabling poor farming households to join cooperatives or agricultural enterprises as shareholders and share in the returns from poverty alleviation industrial development.

With the support of special poverty alleviation funds, Qisheng Village in Changsha Town, Kaixian County, Chongqing, developed a kiwifruit professional cooperative. For registered poor households, poverty alleviation and development funds were "allocated as shares to households" at a standard of 2,000 yuan per share, and poor households became shareholders in the cooperative. "In the past, when the village developed poverty alleviation industries, many poor households could only stand aside and worry anxiously because they lacked money, and poverty alleviation projects could hardly help the truly poor households," said Xiong Shangbing, party branch secretary of Qisheng Village. After poverty alleviation funds were "allocated as shares to households," poor households could also participate in poverty alleviation projects, and the driving effect was very obvious. Last year the village's kiwifruit output was 75,000 kg, with total revenue of about 3 million yuan. From this alone, each poor household on average could receive dividends of more than 4,000 yuan according to shares.

Targeted poverty alleviation calls for big poverty alleviation thinking

Reporters found in grassroots interviews that compared with traditional whole-village poverty alleviation and regional poverty alleviation and development, "to-the-person, to-the-household" targeted poverty alleviation is still in its initial stage. The grassroots report that to further improve relevant poverty alleviation policies, two difficult problems remain to be solved:

First, as the value of "to-the-person, to-the-household" poverty alleviation policies increases, the phenomenon of poor people "competing to be poor" has begun to become prominent. Although the state clearly stipulates the poverty line, the rural population is large and income sources are complex, making accurate statistics relatively difficult. But income is also a key indicator for measuring whether farmers are poor, and the grassroots generally adopt estimation methods for farmers' income, making it difficult to precisely classify poor households.

At the rural grassroots level, some poverty alleviation policies "cause no conflict when not reaching households, but once they reach households, conflict arises," and everyone argues fiercely. Grassroots cadres believe that transparent processes and strict supervision in the "registration and filing" of poor households can reduce grassroots conflicts, but to further solve the problem of "competing to be poor," it is still necessary to further improve policy design, more scientifically assess farmers' income levels and family circumstances, make to-the-household poverty alleviation policy procedures more rigorous, and establish a supervision and complaint mechanism with designated personnel to handle complaints.

Second, for "to-the-person, to-the-household" to truly take effect, one principle must be adhered to: the causes of poverty among farming households are diverse, so poverty alleviation policies should also be diverse and targeted, and government departments should also strengthen policy linkage and coordination.

⟧ For example, according to statistics, among Chongqing's poor population, about 30% are "impoverished due to illness." The existing serious illness assistance policies of civil affairs, medical insurance, and other departments mainly target extremely poor groups such as urban and rural subsistence allowance recipients and rural five-guarantee households. For poor households, no targeted serious illness assistance policy has yet been issued. Zhou Song, director of the Fund Planning Division of the Chongqing Municipal Poverty Alleviation Office, said that according to the requirements of targeted poverty alleviation, relevant assistance policies should further expand the scope of support to solve the specific difficulties of poor people.

In the view of many grassroots cadres, as national poverty alleviation enters a new stage, in the face of complex and diverse causes of poverty, targeted poverty alleviation "is absolutely not just a matter for the director of the poverty alleviation office, but a matter for county heads and provincial governors." A working mechanism led by the government and involving joint efforts by departments urgently needs to be established in order to truly form a major poverty alleviation pattern of comprehensive policy implementation. (Ban Yue Tan reporter Li Song)