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UPDATED: August 6, 2012 NO. 15 APRIL 12, 2012
Helping the Poor
More efforts are needed to achieve the new targets set in the country's development-oriented poverty reduction program
By Yin Pumin
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HAPPY WITH LUNCH: Students have lunch in classroom at Gandou Village Primary School in Mashan County, southwest China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, on February 24. In October last year, the government launched a program to provide free lunch for students from impoverished rural families (HUANG XIAOBANG)

"The increased budget allocation will be used to target clustered poverty-stricken areas, which will be the new focus of poverty relief efforts," Fan said.

Meanwhile, Zhuang with the Asian Development Bank said that a major bottleneck for such a large-scale program is its failure to target the most needy segments of the population, despite its achievement in raising the general income of impoverished regions.

According to regulations, the special funds for poverty relief will be split into three parts, with 60 percent earmarked for developing industries and special agricultural items, 30 percent for infrastructure construction and 10 percent for the training of impoverished locals.

Some are worried, however, that the "easy money" may become a source of corruption in some regions.

Du Xiaoshan, a researcher at the Rural Development Institute of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS), echoed the sentiment, indicating that some of the funds are not appropriately allocated and used.

"Problems like fund appropriation and misuse are not uncommon, and can only be addressed with a transparent management mechanism," Du said, stressing that the funds should be cautiously used to solve urgent problems.

Between 2004 and 2005, 56 officials in southwest China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region were found to have embezzled 11 million yuan ($1.75 million) from poverty alleviation funds, according to a report by Xinhua News Agency.

"The government is striving to improve the management of funds earmarked for poverty relief projects in rural areas," said Hu Jinglin, Assistant Minister of Finance, at a news conference last December. "There will be regular information disclosure about the projects and officials found guilty of embezzling or misusing the funds would be severely punished."

According to Hu, the Central Government is also considering establishing a comprehensive evaluation mechanism to determine whether local governments have used the poverty alleviation funds in an effective and efficient way.

However, sufficient funds alone do not necessarily guarantee the success of the poverty alleviation program.

"At least three factors restrain the development of impoverished areas, including harsh natural conditions, a large poverty-

stricken population and poor infrastructure," said Zhang Yi, a researcher with the CASS Institute of Population and Labor Economics.

New battlefields

On November 1, 2011, the Outline for Poverty Reduction and Development of China's Rural Areas (2011-20) was released. The chief target is to provide adequate food and clothing for poverty-stricken people while ensuring their access to compulsory education, basic medical services and housing by 2020.

The outline is the third state-level poverty-reduction plan since 1994 and is part of the government's efforts to build a well-off society in an all-around way by 2020.

However, anti-poverty experts warn that some deep-seated problems are constraining the development of the country's poor areas, and the whole project of poverty reduction will continue to be an arduous and long-term task for the government.

Some regions of the country remain poor, including the Liupanshan mountainous areas in Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region and the Qinling-Bashan mountainous regions in Shaanxi and Sichuan provinces, partly because of their unfavorable access to transportation, climate and geographic conditions.

The outline said the government will focus on helping poverty-stricken areas that lie in vast and contiguous stretches shake off poverty over the next decade.

"These regions will see intensified efforts aimed at fighting poverty and increased financial input from the government," said Professor Wang at Renmin University of China.

As a follow up, a trans-provincial trial project for poverty relief was launched in November last year in China's central and western regions.

The pilot scheme is based in the Wuling Mountain region that covers 71 underdeveloped counties in Hubei, Hunan and Guizhou provinces and Chongqing Municipality.

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