MAKE REAL EFFORTS FOR REAL RESULTS IN TARGETED POVERTY ELIMINATION

MAKE REAL EFFORTS FOR REAL RESULTS IN TARGETED POVERTY ELIMINATION*

November 27, 2015

To achieve results in the battle against poverty, the key is to find the right approaches, establish effective mechanisms, and focus our efforts on the most difficult problems. It will not do to simply recite slogans, put on a show, act blindly without really knowing what to do, do things in a cursory manner, use a sledgehammer to crack a nut, or set a mackerel to catch a sprat. We should make real efforts in targeted policy design and implementation for real results.

During my field trip to Fuping County, Hebei Province in 2012, I suggested that we should proceed from local realities, improve planning, and give case-specific guidance for optimum results. To summarize our experience across the whole country, we have found that the best and the most effective mechanism is the targeted approach. We need to ensure precision in identifying the poor accurately, arranging targeted programs, utilizing capital efficiently, taking household-based measures, dispatching first Party secretaries based on village conditions, and achieving the set goals. This is an essential requirement in implementing the Party’s principle of pragmatism.

To implement the targeted approach, four questions should be answered. 

First, we should determine who should receive help in poverty alleviation and identify the poverty-stricken households. To a certain extent the registration system has built a database of the impoverished population. However, more practical and meticulous work needs to be done to get a clearer picture of the real poor in order to ensure the success of our efforts. The quality of statistical data must be improved. The real poverty-stricken population must not be excluded, while the population that is not really poor should not be included. We should have a clear idea of the poverty level of the truly impoverished and the root causes of their problems, so as to implement targeted policies for different households and individuals. On the basis of the registration, Gansu Province and other areas have drawn a map of poverty, which provides a full picture of the scale and distribution of the poor population, as well as the root causes of their poverty, and their current employment, income and housing conditions. Through this map they have detailed information on every impoverished household, and a program of poverty alleviation, a set of assistance measures and a thorough timetable for each, leaving no one behind. This is an approach that meets the requirements of targeted poverty alleviation and should be promoted.

In determining who receives assistance, we must refrain from applying all poverty alleviation measures to every poor household regardless of specific circumstances. Targeted measures for every household and individual provide specific assistance to solve their specific problems. Not every measure is directed towards all poverty-stricken households. For example, to develop modern agriculture, promote improved crop varieties and farming techniques, and develop specialty industries, we need a considerable operational scale, with the farmers’ cooperatives, family farms, and other new forms of business playing a leading role. That is not something that can be undertaken by any single household. We should allow and encourage experimentation in ways to help the poor population with targeted measures and by developing new economic activities. Rural infrastructure should be planned for the integrated development of whole villages, townships, counties, river basins or regions as appropriate. In some ethnic minority areas, for a variety of reasons, job opportunities are limited. Poverty alleviation and elimination there is more difficult than in other areas. There should be more preferential policies and more efforts to implement these policies in such areas. Small ethnic groups in remote and border areas that are still severely impoverished should be supported by additional special measures. 

All localities and relevant departments should categorize poverty alleviation policies and work out standard operating procedures for targeted poverty alleviation. Preferential policies should be targeted at the households or groups they are tailored for in order to prevent new problems and instability.

Second, we should determine who is to implement poverty alleviation. The key is to assign specific responsibilities to designated officials. We should quicken our pace to develop a working mechanism in which the central leadership makes overall plans, provincial authorities assume overall responsibility, and city and county authorities take charge of implementation. They should define a clear division of work, clarify their own responsibilities, assign specific tasks to designated officials, and produce a thorough evaluation of their performance, so that all officials will perform their functions and duties in coordination and cooperation.

In this battle, the CPC Central Committee and the State Council are mainly responsible for overall planning at the national level, such as formulating major policies and measures, planning key projects, addressing systemic issues and problems, and evaluating the performance of provincial Party committees and governments in development-driven poverty alleviation. Provincial Party committees and governments assume overall responsibility for poverty elimination in their administrative regions, including matters related to goal setting, project allocation, funding, mobilization, supervision and evaluation, to make sure that poverty is eliminated and all impoverished counties emerge from poverty as scheduled. Party committees and governments at the city level are responsible for communication between different levels, coordination within their own regions, and supervision and inspection, with the focus on eliminating poverty in impoverished counties. County Party committees and governments should fulfill the main responsibility for implementation. County Party secretaries and government heads should take first responsibility for detailed work, including target identification, scheduling, project execution, use of funds, manpower allocation, and progress management.

Central Party and government departments should take poverty elimination as their own responsibility and strengthen organization and leadership of such work in their departments and sectors. They should better fulfill the duties of their departments and use the resources of their sectors to eradicate poverty, giving priority to poverty alleviation projects, funding, work coordination and measures. The principal leaders of central Party and government departments should carry out in-depth research into the efforts of their departments and the outreach teams in poor areas to improve their work. The designated leading units responsible for contiguous impoverished areas should play the role of communication, coordination, guidance and promotion for the work in their areas.

Third, we should determine how to help the poor to break free from poverty. We cannot treat the symptoms without the right remedies. According to the real situation of the impoverished areas and people, we should adopt five targeted measures:

One, boosting the economy to provide more job opportunities. Poverty alleviation is not charity. We should guide and encourage all those who have the ability to work for a better future with their own hands. Some of the poverty-stricken population have the ability to work, with arable land or other resources, but they lack the funds, the industries and the skills required. We should encourage them to leverage local resources and strengths in areas such as agriculture, forestry, animal husbandry, commerce, and tourism. The priority of poverty elimination in such areas should be improving work and living conditions, especially infrastructure such as water engineering, transport and communications facilities, and public services such as technical training, education and health care. With these improvements, all villages and households should have direct access to better infrastructure and services. We should encourage farmers in impoverished areas to seek employment or start a business in their own areas or other areas, which will effectively add to their income within a short period of time. The local governments at both ends of labor transfer should help migrant workers and provide them with more support.

Two, relocating the poverty-stricken population from uninhabitable areas. Some people live in impoverished areas with harsh natural conditions and frequent natural disasters. It is costly to provide them with water, power and roads, and very difficult to help them shake off poverty in those areas. For these areas, relocation is the only option. This is a complex and difficult project to be supported by preferential policies and dedication on our part. There is a problem fairly common in relocation projects everywhere – the poorest of rural households cannot benefit from government subsidies because they do not have the money to pay for their share of the projects. Relocation projects should be funded sufficiently from various channels through such means as integrating resources, raising the subsidy standards, making better use of the policy for the transfer of construction land quotas from rural to urban areas, and issuing subsidized loans. Before relocation, it is essential to define the scale and priorities, with a clear objective and a feasible resettlement schedule. Relocation should be carried out year by year in a planned and organized way. Resettlement sites should be determined according to the carrying capacity of local resources and environments. The best sites would be county seats or easily accessible towns and central villages not far from villages of origin. If possible, the resettled population can be registered as urban residents. We should try our best to create job opportunities for the resettled population to ensure a stable income and equitable access to public services. We should ensure smooth relocation and settlement, and make sure that those involved have the means to better themselves. Some poverty-stricken people may find it difficult to bid farewell to their native land. We should respect the wishes of these people and use a prudent and consensus-based approach. We should explain the reasons for relocation to them, and coercion is not allowed.

Three, providing eco-jobs for the poverty-stricken population. In impoverished areas where the natural conditions are harsh, while the ecosystems are awaiting protection and restoration, we can explore a new approach to poverty elimination through promoting eco-environmental protection and restoration. Many impoverished areas are at the same time key eco-environmental functional zones or nature reserves, as well as areas with large ethnic minority populations. These include Tibet and other areas with large Tibetan populations in Sichuan, Yunnan, Gansu and Qinghai, the Wuling Mountains, and other impoverished areas in Yunnan, Guizhou and Guangxi. We should strengthen eco-environmental protection and restoration in poor areas, increase government transfer payments to key eco-environmental functional zones, and expand the scope of those eligible for preferential policies. We should move ahead with projects to return farmland back to forest or grassland in impoverished areas. Basic cropland there on slopes above 25 degrees can be included in such projects, and the total area of basic cropland should be adjusted rationally. Funds allotted by the central government for eco-environmental recompense in key eco-environmental functional zones have not been used efficiently, some having been evenly distributed across a province, and some diverted for other purposes by counties. This has to change. For example, with the establishment of the system of national parks, we can convert poor people with the ability to work into eco-workers, such as forest rangers, and pay their wages out of the funds for eco-environmental recompense and protection projects.

Four, improving education in poor areas. The best way to help the impoverished population is to raise their educational level. Education is the fundamental means to prevent poverty from being passed down from generation to generation. At present, some poor areas face great difficulties in education. For various reasons, children from poverty-stricken families tend to drop out of school more often, and a growing number of people believe that schooling is useless. An increasing number of children from poor families have had less education than those from other families. Education in impoverished areas will have a far-reaching impact, and deserves our greatest efforts. At this stage of poverty elimination, vocational education and training is a priority. If a child from a poor family can find employment through skills acquired from vocational education, there is hope for that family to escape poverty. National education funds should continue to be weighted towards impoverished areas, for basic education and vocational education. So should the Special Teaching Post Program and the National Teachers’ Training Program. We should help impoverished areas to improve their schools and the training of their teachers. A mechanism will be built at the provincial level for the recruitment of new teachers for rural areas. We should pilot a program on exempting students from registered poverty-stricken families from all tuition and miscellaneous fees for regular high school, and exempt all tuition and fees for secondary vocational education. High-quality urban schools should be encouraged to pair up with schools in impoverished rural areas and provide assistance to them. We should work to establish a public service network for preschool education in impoverished areas, and direct particular attention to education for children from rural families, especially those who remain in rural areas while their parents leave to work in cities. In recent years, a series of painful incidents among these children have taught us that our poverty alleviation policies should be better thought out and followed through from design to implementation, so that the children of poor families truly benefit from the policies of the Party and the government.

Five, improving social security for poverty alleviation. At present, 20 million to 25 million people among the poverty-stricken population have completely or partially lost the ability to work. Even when we have eradicated extreme poverty by 2020, their basic living still needs to be guaranteed by social security. We should dovetail the rural poverty line and the subsistence allowance for rural residents. The current rural poverty line is determined by the central government, while subsistence allowances for rural residents are determined by local governments. There is a gap between the two in many areas. We should coordinate the two standards by defining the minimum subsistence allowance according to the national poverty line. If local subsistence allowances are below the national poverty line, they should be gradually upgraded to the national poverty line. The two standards should be unified to guarantee basic living. We should also provide other forms of social assistance, including emergency relief for people in difficulty due to natural disasters. We should coordinate all the social assistance systems, including rural subsistence allowances, basic old-age pension schemes for rural and nonworking urban residents, and the Five Guarantees for rural households in extreme poverty.

In addition, we should increase medical insurance and medical assistance for poverty alleviation. As to the causes of poverty, a large number of people have become poor or relapsed into poverty because of illness. The unexpected can happen at any time. It is necessary to establish and improve medical insurance and medical assistance systems, and provide timely and effective assistance to those in need. We should make sure that the rural poverty-stricken population is covered by more preferential policies of the new rural cooperative medical care system and serious illness insurance. Reimbursement for outpatient expenses should cover all the impoverished areas first. The individual contributions made by the poverty-stricken population to the new rural cooperative medical care system should be subsidized by the government. More medical aid, temporary assistance, and charity relief should be provided for those in need. We should establish a mechanism to provide insurance and aid in treating major and very serious illnesses for all the poor people. We should implement poverty alleviation through improving health care. We should strengthen the prevention and treatment of infectious, endemic and chronic diseases in impoverished areas, and carry out major public health programs, including better nutrition for children and free pre-pregnancy examination for healthy childbirth, to ensure basic health services for the poverty-stricken population.

The above are the main approaches. It would be simplistic to apply one model to all places, as conditions may differ considerably. New approaches should be tried for targeted poverty alleviation through more channels and in diverse forms to suit local conditions.

To eliminate rural poverty on schedule, it must be made clear and emphasized that we must maintain stability in agriculture and achieve a sustained increase in farmers’ incomes. This has a direct bearing on the elimination of rural poverty. If incomes fall, those who have just escaped poverty may find themselves back in poverty, and there could even be new cases of poverty. Therefore, it is necessary to expand the sources of income growth for farmers and improve the supporting policy framework.

Fourth, we should properly deregister those who have emerged from poverty. Targeted poverty alleviation is meant to help the poverty-stricken population to escape poverty. The relationship between ends and means should be clarified. We should speed up the establishment of a poverty exit mechanism to deregister the counties and households that are no longer in poverty, so as to eliminate poverty in a more targeted and effective manner.

One, we should set a timetable for an orderly exit. The elimination of poverty in impoverished counties should be coordinated with the process of building a moderately prosperous society in all respects. A mechanism needs to be built early on. An annual plan for the exit has to be worked out, in a way that is neither over-conservative nor over-ambitious.

Two, we should allow a “grace period”, in which we will continue to implement poverty alleviation policies in previously impoverished areas. The label of impoverished county is no accolade, but many counties are reluctant to remove the label, mainly because of the high value associated with the label, the removal of which will deprive them of funds from the government coffers. That is to some extent understandable. As a matter of fact, after being removed from the poverty list, it will take some time for the former impoverished counties to foster and consolidate the capacity for self-development. We have to give them a leg up to get them going. We should make sure that they can be supported by preferential policies for an additional period. We should continue to treat them as a priority in industrial development and annual planning. Special funding projects and partner assistance programs should continue. In addition, we can reward counties that have emerged from poverty ahead of schedule as an incentive for other counties to do the same.

Three, we should strictly follow the criteria when evaluating whether the label of poverty can be lifted from a county. Impoverished counties are encouraged to remove the label, but they are not expected to do so through fraud and falsification, or by lowering the bar and seeking instant success. This evaluation has to be conducted against strict standards and procedures, and the results must stand the test. It is necessary to strengthen public supervision of poverty elimination, by either the local residents or third parties, in order to add credibility to the evaluation. Acts of misconduct in poverty alleviation, such as the manipulation of numbers, will be investigated, and those responsible will be held accountable.

Four, we should deregister impoverished households one by one and ensure that each and every individual has shaken off poverty. The registration of poverty-stricken households should be managed in a dynamic manner. Households no longer living in poverty should be deregistered; households that have fallen back into poverty should be re-registered. The government should match its poverty alleviation tasks with the dynamic registration data of the households and individuals before making timely adjustments to relevant policies and adopting targeted steps to address serious problems. In assigning poverty alleviation tasks, it is not a good idea to simply set quotas for each level without regard to the actual situation. This practice will prove to be self-deception, which will inevitably result in falsification. The results of our work have to be recognized by the people. Assistance measures for former poverty-stricken households can remain in place for an additional period until they are out of poverty for good.

Here I want to emphasize the importance of poverty elimination in old revolutionary base areas. The old revolutionary base areas and the people there made enormous sacrifices and a major contribution to the victory of the CPC-led Chinese revolution, which will forever be engraved in the history of the Communist Party of China, the People’s Liberation Army, and the People’s Republic of China.

We should always remember and honor their sacrifices and contribution. Benefitting from the rapid development since the founding of the PRC in 1949, and particularly since the launch of reform and opening up in 1978, the old revolutionary base areas have undergone profound changes, and the people there have experienced significant improvements to their lives. However, in some of these areas, the people are not leading a decent life due to inadequate infrastructure and sluggish development. What makes matters worse is that a sizable rural poor population poses a stern challenge to poverty elimination in these areas.

It is the responsibility of the Party and the government to help the old revolutionary base areas to attain faster growth, and the rural poor there to shake off poverty through development-driven poverty alleviation, so that they enter moderate prosperity along with the rest of the country. Party committees and governments at all levels should develop a stronger sense of mission and responsibility, make it a priority to develop these areas and improve people’s lives there, and act to help them escape poverty and embrace prosperity as soon as possible.

* Part of the speech at the Central Conference on Poverty Alleviation and Development.

(Not to be republished for any commercial or other purposes.)