Progress in poverty reduction and human rights

Children of She ethnic group sit in front of a monument that reads "China's No. 1 Poverty Relief Village" at Chixi Village, Panxi town, Fuding city in East China's Fujian province, Feb 14, 2016. The village has shaken off poverty thanks to assistance from Party and government officials at all levels over the past 30 years. [Photo/Xinhua]

China's State Council Information Office on Monday issued a white paper on China's progress in poverty reduction and human rights.

Following is the full text of the document. Contents

I.China's Poverty Reduction Program Has Promoted the Development of Human Rights

II.Ensuring Impoverished People's Right to Life

III.Safeguarding the Rights of Specific Groups

IV.Improving the Development Environment of Impoverished Areas

V.Concerted Efforts in Poverty Reduction

VI.Poverty Reduction at a Crucial Stage

Poverty eradication is and always has been a goal and a basic right of all peoples in their pursuit of a happy life. Over the years, based on the prevailing national conditions, the Communist Party of China (CPC) and the Chinese government have remained committed to a development concept that puts people's rights to subsistence and to development first. Committed to reducing and eliminating poverty, China has endeavored to guarantee and improve people's well-being, and developed a full range of social undertakings, so as to ensure that the results of development benefit all the people in a fairer way, and that all enjoy the rights to equal participation and equal development.

Since the 18th National Congress of the CPC in November 2012, in the great cause of building a moderately prosperous society and realizing the Chinese Dream of great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation, the CPC Central Committee led by General Secretary Xi Jinping has remained committed to a development concept that puts people first, and implemented the basic strategy of targeted poverty alleviation and elimination. China's poverty reduction actions, both solid and effective, have made a great contribution to the cause of international poverty reduction, and achieved remarkable results in world human rights development.

I. China's Poverty Reduction Program Has Promoted the Development of Human Rights

Poverty is so widespread that it has seriously hindered the fulfillment and enjoyment of human rights; reducing and eliminating poverty is therefore a major element of human rights protection.

Over the recent decades, the Chinese government has persevered in its attempts to eliminate poverty, improve people's well-being, and gradually realize common prosperity. It has made continuous development-oriented poverty-reduction efforts in rural areas to help those who are striving to escape from poverty and improve the quality of their lives.

China's poverty reduction actions are broad in extent; they include building rural and agricultural infrastructure, helping increase the incomes of impoverished population, and providing public services such as social security and health care, education and cultural services. While comprehensively safeguarding the economic, social and cultural rights of those living in poverty, these measures have created conditions for the protection of other human rights.

Since the initiation of reform and opening up in the late 1970s, the Chinese government has worked without fail to alleviate poverty－establishing special poverty-relief institutions, determining targeted areas and population, allocating specialized funds, formulating poverty standards and special preferential policies adapted to China's national conditions, and steering its policy of poverty alleviation through development.

The government has carried out large-scale development-oriented poverty eradication programs across the country in a planned and organized way, and implemented a series of medium- and long-term projects which include the Seven-Year Program for Lifting 80 Million People Out of Poverty (1994-2000), the Outline for Development-Oriented Poverty Alleviation for China's Rural Areas (2001-2010) and the Outline for Development-Oriented Poverty Alleviation for China's Rural Areas (2011-2020). Poverty reduction has become an important component of China's national strategy.