More funds allocated to alleviate poverty

China has vowed to make increased efforts to eliminate poverty, after significant progress has been made in the past five years.

China will allocate 106.1 billion yuan (US$16.8 billion) in funding for poverty alleviation work in 2018, some 20 billion yuan more than last year, Liu Yongfu, director of the State Council Leading Group Office of Poverty Alleviation and Development, said yesterday.

The country has lifted more than 68 million people out of poverty over the past five years, Liu told a press conference on the sidelines of the annual session of the National People’s Congress, China’s national legislature.

Experience should be accumulated and lessons drawn in poverty reduction work to establish a more sustainable mechanism that can increase safety and reduce corruption in the future, Liu said.

China decided to launch a campaign to eliminate poverty in November 2015.

Over 80,000 people, meanwhile, have been investigated and punished for misconduct during the poverty elimination campaign, including 450 accountable for fraudulent claims or misappropriation totaling 730 million yuan in an inspection of 28 provinces last year, according to Vice Minister of Finance Hu Jinglin.

The country has set 2020 as the target year to complete the building of a moderately prosperous society in all respects, which requires all citizens to be living above the poverty line — per capita annual income of 2,300 yuan, a standard set in 2011.

China plans to lift at least 10 million people out of poverty this year, according to the annual government work report made by Premier Li Keqiang on Monday.

There were around 30 million Chinese living below the national poverty line at the end of last year.

To win the fight against poverty, China should carry out the agenda on time, ensure a high quality of targeted work, and maintain continuity of the process, as “relative poverty” will still exist even after the country eliminates “absolute poverty” by 2020, according to Liu.