SW China's Sichuan lifts over 6m out of poverty in 6 years

CHENGDU -- Southwest China's Sichuan province has made significant progress in poverty alleviation over the past six years, with over 6 million people escaping poverty by the end of 2019, a local official said at a press conference on Wednesday.

By relocating impoverished residents to more habitable locations through government subsidies, and by assisting poverty-stricken students from pre-school to higher education, Sichuan has won a decisive victory in poverty alleviation, said Peng Qinghua, secretary of the Sichuan Provincial Committee of the Communist Party of China.

China aims to achieve the goal of eradicating absolute poverty by 2020. Sichuan is one of the six provinces with the heaviest poverty alleviation burdens in China.

The province was home to 88 impoverished counties at the end of 2013, and 81 had moved out of poverty by the end of last year. The poverty rate in Sichuan fell from 9.6 percent in 2013 to 0.3 percent in 2019.

Local authorities are determined to see to the remaining seven counties lifted out of poverty on schedule, Peng said.