Li Guozhang, who is an advisor to the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) and deputy director of the Western Development Academe of Lanzhou University, said it is vital that 30 million poverty-stricken farmers are helped if China is to become a stable and affluent society.

Li said that the strategic objective to resolve rural poverty has been basically realized since the foundation of the state and particularly since the implementation of the 8th five-year poverty-relief plan, but there are still 30 million rural farmers living with poverty, "Most of them spread in 125 underdeveloped counties of six western provinces and regions like Gansu, Guizhou, Yunnan, Shanxi, Shaanxi and Xinjiang," he added.

After exhaustive analysis on poor distribution in China, covering 2,300 counties and 587 under-developed counties, he discovered that a distinct feature of poverty concentrated areas was that although they were being helped by the government the longest, they were the last to get out of poverty themselves; while some were living in conditions of abject poverty, the majority were what he described as 'food and cloth needy.'

In order to solve this problem, the central government has been pouring funding and developing policies in the regions for several decades. Li has attempted to address this question of why 30 million poor can't be helped out of poverty?: first, the natural resource is poor and economic foundations very underdeveloped; second, it has an underdeveloped economic system with poor executive control and limited capacity for changing methods; third, it has had poor economic growth and development; fourth, the inappropriate measures put forward by poverty relief agents in local government have affected its development.

As poverty relief must be a key to development, and the assistance of 30 million poor being a stage in that development, the answers to this problem need addressing. Li has put forward some ideas: one, to initiate new principles on poverty relief in order to assist development at a regional macro level, rather than addressing individual cases; second, to stimulate a specialized 'stage' relief program based on poor distribution and conditions; third, to implement development through financial management policies and successful economic production planning techniques; forth, to improve local internal/government qualifications, public administrative systems, population quantity and non-technological investment suitable for the needs of local development.

(China.org.cn by Wang Zhiyong March 11, 2003)