China praises individual contributions to poverty-relief work

President Xi Jinping on Monday hailed the outstanding figures in China's robust battle against poverty while calling for enhanced and solid efforts to win the fight.

He made the remarks in a written instruction on Monday, when a meeting was held in Beijing to honor these outstanding people who have made significant contributions to poverty-relief work.

Xi also called for the individuals' fighting spirit to be spread nationwide to encourage further efforts in poverty-reduction work, adding that the poverty alleviation is the toughest of all tough battles. 

Great contributions

Chen Kaizhi, a 77-year-old former municipality official of Guangzhou in south China's Guangdong Province, is one of the individuals who received the honor and shared his personal experience at the meeting.

Officials who led the poverty-relief work visit resident's house in Nanping City, Fujian Province, September 14, 2017. /Xinhua Photo

Chen devoted himself to such campaigns since 1991. In 1996, the Chinese government launched east-west pairing-off cooperation for poverty reduction. As the official in charge of this program in Guangzhou, he made contributions when helping Baise, a poor and remote mountainous city in Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region to get out of poverty.

With his efforts, 380 villages in Baise have installed power supply, and over 5,000 kilometers of the road network was constructed in 580 villages. Chen also encouraged donations from society to help 80,000 children in 12 counties of Baise to get back to school. Also under this poverty reduction cooperation program, more than 20 enterprises have invested over 1.2 billion yuan in the city.

Other outstanding individuals also gave accounts on their poverty reduction efforts during the meeting. 

Premier Li Keqiang congratulated those honored for their achievements and asked authorities to support their work and gather more strength from all of the society for the goal of building a moderately prosperous society in all respects by 2020.

Villagers prepare woods to construct new houses in Fanyang township of Wuzhishan, south China's Hainan Province, May 1, 2017. /Xinhua Photo

In a written instruction, Li stressed that China's battle against poverty has entered the final stage, and authorities at all levels should make greater efforts to break development bottlenecks and strengthen the efficiency and effectiveness of poverty-reduction work. 

Chinese Vice Premier Wang Yang, who is also the head of the Leading Group for Poverty Alleviation and Development under the State Council, attended the meeting, urging to thoroughly implement Xi’s important poverty alleviation and development strategy to win the battle against poverty. 

Remarkable progress

Remarkable progress has been made since the CPC Central Committee made a solemn promise to lift all rural people out of poverty by 2020, Xi said in the written message.

Since the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC) in November 2012, the Chinese leadership has placed poverty alleviation high on its agenda.

More than 10 million rural residents are estimated to escape poverty in 2017. The total number from 2013 to the end of 2017 will surpass 66 million people, almost equivalent to the population of France.

With over 700 million rural residents lifted out of poverty since the start of China's reform and opening-up in 1978, the country aims to lift at least 10 million people out of poverty annually over the next three years and eradicate poverty by 2020.

China will mark its fourth National Poverty Relief Day on Oct. 17.