Development gives the poor a fresh start

Deng Musheng started a business repairing household appliances shortly after his family moved to a 100-square-meter house in the urban area of Liannan county.

Two years ago, the 40-year-old farmer, from Neitian village, about 25 kilometers from the urban area, depended on planting fir trees for a living.

"Farming trees is a traditional business that is regularly seen in mountainous and cold areas. But farmers make little money from it," Deng said.

Under a poverty alleviation and development program, Deng spent 40,000 yuan ($6,400) buying an apartment in a new residential community, which was built by the county government and sold to rural residents at a preferential price.

"I borrowed some money from friends to buy the house. By running the home appliances repair service, I'm confident of paying off the debt in a few years," Deng said.

He earns about 3,000 yuan a month. "My wife also works in a factory downtown," he said.

Deng is one of thousands of rural residents in Guangdong to benefit from the province-wide poverty alleviation and development program.

Li Ronggen, vice-governor of Guangdong, said at a media briefing late last month that since the program was launched in 2009 the Guangdong government has selected about 1.6 million people from 370,000 households in 3,407 villages to benefit from it.

The poverty line in Guangdong's rural areas was set at 2,500 yuan per capita net income in 2009.

In the past three years, the provincial government has invested 14.8 billion yuan in fighting regional poverty, Li said.

"The average annual income of Guangdong's impoverished people increased from 2,500 yuan in 2009 to some 6,100 yuan in 2011," Li said.

The vice-governor said more rural people will benefit from the program as the poverty line for the program from 2013 to 2015 has been set at the equivalent of 33 percent of the previous year's rural residents' per capita net income in the province.

Rural residents' per capita annual income in Guangdong is expected to be 10,000 yuan this year.

"In many people's minds, residents in Guangdong are very rich. But the income gap between urban and rural areas in Guangdong is very large," Li said.

Fourteen cities in the province's eastern, western and northern regions, where a majority of rural residents live below the poverty line, contribute less than 22 percent of Guangdong's fiscal revenue, Li said.

Guangdong Party chief Wang Yang once said: "I could imagine how prosperous the Pearl River Delta region was before I came to Guangdong and Qingyuan city. But unexpectedly, the province's northern mountainous region is so poor."

For example, Qingyuan, a mountainous city in the north of the province, has about 238,000 impoverished people, accounting for nearly 10 percent of the city's rural population, sources with the city's office of poverty alleviation and development said.

Guangdong is also working on a stable growth system for capital earmarked for poverty relief in line with local economic and social development, besides including poverty alleviation funds in the fiscal budget, Li said.

Apart from major investment in the program, sending cadres to villages also played a key role in helping fight regional poverty, the vice-governor said.

As of August, more than 11,500 officials from various government authorities have been sent to villages to help residents develop farm-related businesses, according to the provincial office of poverty alleviation and development.

Wang Qingming, an official with the Tobacco Monopoly Administration of Guangdong, said a long-term system should be established to help farmers in underdeveloped regions develop profitable industries.

"Villagers will not welcome you if you just come and say some encouraging words. You must really work out some plans to help them develop new farming industries that could help increase their incomes," he said.

Wang, 45, was sent to Sanpai village in Liannan. "My job is to help instruct villagers in farming new crops," he said.

Since his arrival, the annual per capita income of the village's 82 poverty-stricken families has risen from 1,078 yuan in 2009 to 13,068 yuan in 2011, Wang said.

Besides planting traditional crops like grain and peanuts, farmers now know how to develop new ones that could bring bigger economic benefits, Wang said.

qiuquanlin@chinadaily.com.cn