Fujian makes headway in poverty reduction

Nanping, among the poorest places in eastern China's Fujian province, is close to eliminating absolute poverty, local officials said.

The prefecture-level city, in the north of the province, has a population of around 3 million and "lifted 13,000 people out of absolute poverty" in 2017, becoming virtually free of the scourge.

China is seeking to end extreme poverty nationwide by 2020.

A provincial government report in January said only 0.02 percent of Fujian's 38.7 million people still lived in poverty. Its southern coastal cities, such as Xiamen, are affluent.

The latest central government data suggest 30.4 million Chinese live below the national poverty line, with the worst-hit areas being in the Tibet autonomous region, the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region and the provinces of Sichuan, Gansu, Yunnan and Qinghai.

The national poverty line is set at the per capita annual income of 2,300 yuan ($360), according to the Xinhua News Agency. The provincial poverty line is higher.

"Nanping has shaken off poverty," Yuan Yi, Nanping's Party chief, told a group of journalists in the city on May 26.

But eradication is not a onetime solution, he cautioned. "Some people might slip back into poverty because of diseases or natural disasters," Yuan said.

In 2017, 95 households, or around 270 individuals, returned to absolute poverty, Yi said, without specifying the cause.

"The big challenge in the next few years will be to prevent this from happening," he added.

China Daily was part of a media group tour last week that studied poverty relief in northern Fujian.

Nanping has built 41 housing blocks, which are now home to most former residents of mountain villages and underdeveloped towns on the plains.

Some officials attributed remote locations, along with disabilities, illnesses and the lack of access to markets to sell farm produce, as major reasons for extreme poverty in rural Fujian.

Around 13,400 people were relocated last year, said Wu Bing, Nanping's deputy mayor.

Floods, mudslides and other calamities have also forced people from their homes in the past. After a flood ruined their houses made of wood, clay and rocks, many rural residents moved to apartments in the resettlement zone of Tianshan town that was set up in 2010. Once farmers, they now earn their livelihoods as mechanics and factory workers.

Nanping has many bamboo groves and tea gardens, and grapes are being grown in villages to boost a cottage liquor industry. But agricultural tourism－at the center of some ongoing poverty alleviation programs－is unlikely to become a key driver of the local economy unless more hotels and homestays for visitors are constructed.

In the neighboring city of Ningde, which has a similar population, the poverty rate dropped significantly "after 34,000 people were pulled out of poverty" in 2017, said Lin Wenfang, the city's deputy Party chief.

Its poverty alleviation projects involve tea, seafood, breweries and "red tourism", among other initiatives.

Rural poverty rate in the country fell by 1.4 percentage points in 2017, according to the National Bureau of Statistics. Li Xiaojun, an official of the Publicity Department of Communist Party of China's Central Committee, said the central government monitors poverty alleviation.

In the past, media reported instances of data being fudged at local levels to show targets were being hit with regard to economic goals such as GDP.

Li said there was "zero tolerance" for corruption in poverty alleviation.

"We should supervise the use of poverty relief funds, and punish any case of misappropriation and embezzlement," he quoted President Xi Jinping, who is also general secretary of the CPC Central Committee, as telling a conference on poverty last year.

Xing Wen contributed to this story.