"The difficulty in eliminating poverty, therefore, lies not only in reducing the poverty-stricken population, but also in boosting impoverished regions' capabilities for self-initiated development," Wang said.

In recent years, there have been growing calls for focusing poverty alleviation efforts more on ways to increase opportunities and personal development for both poor people as well as income.

"To achieve this, the government should provide more services and opportunities for the poor, including better education, better healthcare, more job opportunities and broader social security coverage," Li Shi said, suggesting the state poverty alleviation strategy should be integrated with national income distribution and redistribution policies.

According to Li Shi, there are also a great number of people living slightly above the poverty line, who do not receive any government help, although their conditions are not much better than those living below the poverty line.

"People living on the edge of the poverty line are at great risk of falling into poverty, because their opportunities and personal development options are the same as those living below the poverty line," Li said. "Hence, the government should reform its poverty alleviation policy and expand its measures so that not only more people are lifted out of poverty, but also more people are prevented from falling into it."

The government said in the 2011-20 anti-poverty outline that it will continue to improve its social security network and make social security a basic measure for solving the problems of insufficient food and clothing.

Established in 2007, China's rural minimum living allowance system had covered 52.14 million poverty-stricken farmers by the end of 2010.

During this year's annual sessions of the National People's Congress (NPC) and the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, lawmakers and political advisors called for various additional efforts for poverty alleviation, including dedicated laws and coordinated efforts in different fields.

"A dedicated law for poverty alleviation and development will help shorten the time for the people in the less-developed areas to share the fruits of development," said Lu Zhiming, a deputy to the NPC and Vice Governor of Guizhou Province. "We need to make studies and enact the poverty relief and development law, rather than staying in the policy level as before."

Cao Lili, another NPC deputy and Director of the Civil Affairs Bureau of northwest China's Shaanxi Province, said that there should be tailored approaches for different people and regions, so that anti-poverty efforts will be more practical.

Anti-Poverty Progress

From 2001 to 2010, the 592 counties in a LGOPAD's poverty relief program saw an average annual growth of 17 percent in their per-capita gross regional product. The per-capita net income of farmers grew by an annual average of 11 percent.

At the end of 2010, the poverty-stricken rural population in the country totaled 26.88 million, down from 94.22 million at the end of 2000. The proportion of poor people in the rural population decreased from 10.2 percent in 2000 to 2.8 percent.

(Source: New Progress in Development-oriented Poverty Reduction for Rural China)

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