The central government is to invest 12.2 billion yuan (US$1.4
billion) in poverty relief programs this year, an increase of 800
million yuan (US$96 million) from previous years, say sources at
the Poverty Reduction Office of the State Council.
Also, local governments will provide 3 billion yuan (US$360
million) in funding support for the programs.
Combined government funding for anti-poverty programs has been
at a record high during the past few years, a representative from
the office said.
At the end of 2003, China had 29 million people below the
poverty line in rural China.
Their per-capita annual income was below 637 yuan (US$77) a
year.
However, the figure saw a significant decrease from the 250
million people below the poverty line in 1977, according to a
United Nations report issued last month.
China's official investment in development projects in rural
China increased from 24.8 billion yuan (US$3 billion) in 2000 to
29.9 billion yuan (US$3.6 billion) in 2003, according to a white
paper China issued earlier this year.
The financial input was used to improve production conditions
for agriculture and animal husbandry in poor areas, to widen
compulsory education and eliminate illiteracy, to train farmers in
practical technology, to prevent and cure endemic diseases and to
provide potable water for people and animals.
Information and communication technologies (ICT) are expected to
benefit more Chinese farmers in the future, as they have proved
successful in helping farmers become more financially viable in the
past three years.
Assisted by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP),
China's ministries of commerce and science and technology in
February 2001 initiated a project to alleviate poverty through ICT
in poor counties of Chongqing
Municipality, and Hebei,
Anhui,
Henan
and Shaanxi
provinces.
The project, centered around farming services on the Internet,
has played an active role in upgrading farmers' skills and
increasing incomes during the past three years, Wang Zhe, an
official of the Ministry of Science
and Technology, said at an international workshop over the
weekend.
In the village of Wu'an in Hebei Province, for example, farmer
Li Suotian received continually updated market information. He
found out that Israeli breeds of tomatoes sold well in Hebei. He
then grew more than 1 mu (0.07 hectares) of tomatoes and
obtained an annual income of 3,500 yuan (US$421) from them. That
income was eight times his normal income from grain growing.
Wang said the Ministry of Science and Technology will allocate
more funds to expand the ICT project in other poverty-hit areas of
the country.
"In the future, the technology information service will be
sustained as a community-based, lifelong study service to upgrade
the labor skills of the rural population," he said.
Toshihiro Tanaka, deputy resident representative of the UNDP in
China, attributes the project's success to the information
technology which is well-tailored to meet farmers' needs.
Tanaka visited Shaanxi last year. He said he was deeply
impressed by a woman doctor there who finds website information
about the prevention of infectious diseases and uses it to teach
farmers how to care for their health.
He said he believed cooperation between the UNDP and China's
government ministries would one day finally realize the goal of
alleviating poverty.
In an interview with China Daily, Yu Zhide, an
information coordinator from Yuyang in Shaanxi Province attending
the workshop, said ICT has greatly enriched farmers and broadened
their horizons.
"Some farmers had never seen computers before the ICT project
was started... Now they know a lot more about the outside world,"
he said.
Yu is a primary school teacher in Yuyang. In his spare time, he
teaches farmers how to access Internet-based farming services.
Farmers from his hometown learned much information about the
raising and selling of pigs, he said.
More than 62 percent of China's 1.3 billion population reside in
poor rural areas.
The further spread of information technology is important to
narrow the gap between the country's better developed eastern areas
and the relatively poor western areas, Wang said.
According to Zhao Chunjiang, director of the Research Center for
National Agricultural Information Engineering Technology, people
who do not know how to conduct exchanges with others by using
information technology are classified as "illiterates" by the
United Nations.
In the Internet era, people in poor rural areas will miss
various opportunities if the digital gap is not rapidly bridged, he
said.
(China Daily May 4, 2004)