(ZHU HUIQING)

China is about to overhaul its poverty alleviation work by reforming a 28-year-old system that targets counties with a large impoverished population to ensure that government funds will be accurately channeled to those in need.

The Central Government plans to cut the number of counties eligible for state poverty relief, according to announcements made by Wang Guoliang, Deputy Director of the State Council Leading Group Office for Poverty Alleviation and Development, at a press conference in Beijing on January 27.

China introduced a system that identifies underdeveloped counties and flags them as key areas for poverty alleviation work in 1986. After the system's introduction, 331 counties were immediately listed. The list was updated three times, in 1994, 2001 and 2011, and there are still 592 counties that receive relief and preferential policies from the Central Government.

New standard

Currently, aside from earmarking each county on the national list of key areas for poverty alleviation annual assistance funds of 30 million yuan ($4.9 million) to 50 million yuan ($8.2 million), the Central Government also arranges other grant programs for these counties as well as incentive policies. Each of these poor counties has also been matched with a well-off county in eastern areas under a pairing-up assistance program.

Wang said that with continued economic growth and the establishment of a well-off society in China, the list will eventually be abolished and that his office is exploring the possibility of introducing a scheme to gradually shrink the list.

Anonymous officials from Lanxi County and Hailun City in northeastern Heilongjiang Province, both national key areas for poverty alleviation, recently told Xinhua News Agency that local governments would do whatever they can to prevent their regions from being delisted as it meant losing earmarked funds from the Central Government. Xinhua reported that many local governments of poverty-stricken counties channeled poverty-relief funds to support other operations that can stimulate local economic growth instead of funding poverty alleviation programs.

In an interview, Liu Yongfu, Director of the State Council Leading Group Office for Poverty Alleviation and Development, said that officials in poor counties are evaluated solely on the local economic growth while their performance regarding poverty alleviation is not treated seriously. "As a result, while the economic scale of some counties has been growing vigorously, some of the local people cannot benefit from it."

On January 25, the State Council, China's cabinet, issued a plan for this year's poverty alleviation drive in the countryside. According to the document, the major performance gauge for government leaders in key poverty-stricken counties will switch from local GDP growth to the improvement in poor people's living standards and how much they have reduced the number of people in poverty.

The change of the evaluation standards for officials will guide them to focus their work on lifting people out of poverty instead of pursuing economic development at all costs, said Wang Sangui, a professor at the School of Agricultural Economics and Rural Development of the Beijing-based Renmin University of China.