China's top leadership on November 28, 2015, pledged resolute measures to help the remaining 70 million poor people shake off poverty and enjoy essential social services by 2020. According to a two-day high-profile conference on poverty alleviation and development, which ended on November 28, 2015, in Beijing, the major tasks for the government over the next five years will include ensuring that the poverty-stricken people have enough to eat and wear, and enjoy compulsory education, health service and housing facilities.
The conference was attended by senior leaders of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee, and the central government and major provincial-level officials.
Identifying poverty alleviation still as "an arduous task," President Xi Jinping told the conference that "No single poor region nor an individual living in poverty will be left behind", when the country accomplishes the goal of "building a moderately prosperous society" by 2020. Mr. Xi urged the governments at all levels to carry out more targeted and precise measures to ensure that the poor people in rural areas have access to food, clothes, basic education, medical care, and safe home.
He demanded that the local governments and officials, particularly those of underdeveloped regions, should make poverty alleviation the top priority in the next five years' work. On the other hand, Premier Li Keqiang said during the conference that priority should be given to the improvement of rural infrastructure, including roads, access to water, power and Internet.
The conference laid out concrete and diversified measures in poverty relief. Mr. Xi asserted that industrial development is the key to poverty alleviation. Local resources should be well utilised to develop industries and ensure employment for the jobless peasants. Relocation was also highlighted. Premier Li urged lifting about 10 million people out of poverty by 2020 through relocation, and local governments should make sure the relocated people have stable jobs to make a living.
The president said that ecological protection should be enhanced in the poor areas, and the poor with labour abilities could be trained to serve as forest rangers and other workers for ecological conservation. The conference also demanded that national expenditure on education should be expanded in the poor areas.
Mr. Xi said that social welfare system should provide basic living conditions for those impoverished without working abilities.
Preferential tax policies, loan interest subsidies and other kinds of favourable financial incentives will be provided to encourage financial institutions to offer more innovative products for poverty alleviation.
Over the past three decades some 700 million rural residents across China shook off poverty. China was the first developing country to meet the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) target of reducing the population living in poverty by half ahead of the 2015 deadline. Analysts said that China's experience in poverty alleviation could be used in helping the other countries attain the poverty reduction target through cooperation with other nations.
If sincerely pursued, measures akin to China's resolution, scheme and experience to root out poverty by 2020 may help Bangladesh emerge as a poverty-free and moderately prosperous nation along with its countryside by 2021.
The writer is a retired professor of Economics, BCS General Education Cadre.    Â
sarwarmdskhaled@gmail.com
China\'s fight for poverty reduction
Sarwar Md. Saifullah Khaled | Published: December 12, 2015 00:00:00 | Updated: February 01, 2018 00:00:00
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