Xi pushes poverty alleviation

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ZHANGJIAKOU, Hebei Province -- President Xi Jinping Tuesday stressed the importance of precision in the battle against poverty, saying that poverty alleviation should focus on targeted people and industries, and use the right tools to produce results.

Xi made the remarks during an inspection tour of the city of Zhangjiakou in northern China's Hebei Province.

"Fighting poverty is the fundamental task in building an all-round moderately prosperous society," Xi said.

He called for more efforts to help the poor develop industries that could grow in a sustainable manner, set up sustainable mechanisms for poverty alleviation, and create driving forces for them to achieve prosperity.

Poverty relief is high on China's 2016-2020 agenda, and the government has vowed to lift everybody out of poverty by 2020. By the end of 2015, China still had 55.75 million people living in poverty.

Since the start of the reform and opening-up in 1978, China's economic boom has helped lift more than 700 million people out of poverty.

"Poverty alleviation is getting more and more difficult as it progresses to the end," Xi said.

He stressed the importance of making sure every poor family had a program for increasing income and every poor person had their way of casting off poverty.

The president pointed to relocation as an important supplementary approach in fighting poverty and highlighted the role of ecological compensation, which would not only help improve the ecological environment but also boost incomes.

"Making sure children of impoverished families enjoy access to high-quality education is a fundamental solution to poverty," Xi said.