Zhang Meiyun, a woman in her late 60s, got a second-hand television set in a "loving supermarket" in Beijing's Xuanwu District over the weekend.

"My grandson will be excited because he finally has a television to watch," said Zhang, who lives with her son, a laid-off worker living on the minimum allowance.

The Chinese capital has eight such "loving supermarkets" in its downtown areas where impoverished urban dwellers can purchase items with a special aid card.

Those cards, often standing for 500 yuan (US$60), were given as gifts by local communities to poor residents.

Beijing is expected to open more such charity shops in the near future, covering more areas including the suburban areas, said Ding Kaishan, director of the Beijing Donation Centre under the city's Civil Affairs Bureau.

If the shops do not have the goods the card-holders need, they can leave a message on a waiting list and workers at the charity shops will inform the customers later when the goods are available, Ding said.

Many cities across the country have opened charity shops in recent years, providing a helping hand to those living on minimum allowance.

Such shops provide daily goods and medicine for the city's poor. The goods there were donated by enterprises, institutions and individuals, according to Ding.

China began issuing the minimum living allowance in 1993 and the criteria for the allowance varies from region to region in line with local economic development.

Last year, more than 22 million urban residents were living on the minimum government allowance, nearly 6 per cent of the nation's total urban population, according to statistics from the Ministry of Civil Affairs.

However, the minimum living allowance scheme is still a low-level security tool for low-income urbanites, as it was designed only to help them meet the basic needs for food and clothes, officials with the ministry said.

For example, in Beijing the per capita monthly allowance can reach 250 yuan (US$30) while in some under-developed cities, it can be as low as 30 yuan (US$3.60).

"The programme, (however,) as part of the whole social security net, plays an important role in maintaining social stability," said Civil Affairs Vice-Minister Yang Yanyin.

Medicare the biggest problem

The Chinese Government paid 15.1 billion yuan (US$1.83 billion) in minimum living allowances in 2003, according to the ministry's statistics.

This year the country plans to include all urban low-income residents in its social security net, Yang said.

To collect accurate information about needy urban residents, civil affairs departments are being asked to set up files for each person and check their income on a regular basis.

The government will update, on a monthly basis,information about how many people receive allowances and how much the allowance is.

"The poverty situation in urban areas is still severe, especially under new circumstances, such as price fluctuations," Yang said.

According to Tang Jun, vice-director of the Social Policy Research Centre under the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, 75 per cent of impoverished urban residents are laid-off workers, unemployed people and employees in troubled enterprises.

"Medical treatment is the biggest problem for those people now," Tang said. "And another problem is education fees for their children."

A series of co-operative activities has been organized by governments and non-government organizations to help improve urban community health care levels.

Thanks to a Sino-British pilot health scheme for urban poor, He Honglin, a middle-aged laid-off worker in Tiexi District of Shenyang, Northeast China's Liaoning Province, has a second life.

He was infected with tuberculosis (TB) last year but had no money for treatment; his wife's salary is around 300 yuan (US$36). And their son now studies at a local university thanks to a bank loan. He could not afford the thousands of yuan needed for medical treatment, so he had no choice but to wait for death.

However, He was luckily covered by the Urban Health and Poverty Project, a project co-funded by the Chinese Government and the British Department for International Development, and was sent to a local TB control centre for treatment.

He needed to pay only less than half of the treatment cost. Furthermore, he has the chance to receive further aid if he still cannot afford the sum.