Battle against poverty still hard in remote mountains

BATTLE AGAINST POVERTY

Building roads has become a priority in poverty alleviation. The local government has invested more than 700 million yuan on road construction and has built over 1,800 roads for poverty-stricken villages.

The road in Longmu village is nearly completed, with villagers only one kilometer away from a different life.

"It will be much easier for us to buy goods from the outside, we can build new houses by that time," Meng Yujie said.

However, building roads can be very costly and the local government has encouraged villagers to relocate into nearby towns and cities.

According to the region's Poverty Relief Office, Guangxi aims to relocate 700,000 impoverished people from 2014 to 2020.

Su Xingjin moved to an apartment in nearby Dahua Yao Autonomous County under the support of local government this year after having lived in a remote village for more than 40 years. The new policy has attracted many people to start a new life like Su.

China is seeking to diversify its poverty relief measures and reducing poverty through industrial development is showing results.

A pig farm co-founded by a private enterprise and local people in Yaocheng village, southwest Guangxi has enabled 16 villagers to have jobs with a monthly income of 2,500 yuan.

"The government should encourage enterprises to set up bases and lend support to poverty-stricken areas, attracting locals to take part in industrial development," said Wang Sangui, chief of the center for anti-poverty studies at Renmin University.

Meanwhile, the government completed agriculture training programs for more than 100,000 people, investing 150 million yuan on education this year, according to Huang Shouhuai, chief of policy research department of Guangxi Poverty Alleviation Office.

No ethnic minorities nor regions should be left behind in poverty alleviation, President Xi said during early this year.

Over the past three decades China has delivered 700 million rural residents from poverty. It was the first developing country to meet the global Millennium Development Goals target of reducing the population living in poverty by half ahead of the 2015 deadline.