Poverty relief is not a stage for shows of power

THE ONGOING poverty-alleviation campaign in China has witnessed some local governments trying to fabricate the impression that they have significantly improved local residents' well-being, even though they have not. Officials in less developed areas have reportedly resorted to tricks to fool superiors. People's Daily condemns such actions and calls for genuine efforts to aid those struggling to escape poverty in its comments on Tuesday:

In the nationwide fight against poverty, which is still haunting tens of millions of Chinese residents in remote rural areas, the biggest hindrance is some local governments' obsession with vanity projects. Such a mentality is not in the interests of local people and the country's poverty-alleviation efforts.

To make concrete progress in the fight against poverty requires responsible local authorities to abandon their twisted way of thinking, which puts their performance for promotion before residents' well-being. There must be zero tolerance to this way of thinking to eradicate it.

Indeed, it is not easy to gain fresh ground in the fight against poverty, but that does not justify some officials' attempts to beautify their achievements. In other words, they are supposed to make a benign connection between their political performance for evaluation and their duty to residents. Otherwise, those still living in poverty may not receive the assistance they need to improve their livelihoods, if the responsible authorities ignore their plight or misuse public power without being strictly supervised and held accountable.

Therefore, the poverty-alleviation inspectors are obliged to make thorough investigations to determine whether poor farmers, for example, have been helped as expected. They should impose due punishments on those officials who have only paid lip service to their pledges and seek to exaggerate their performance with the aim of gaining promotions.