“China has lifted more people out of poverty than any other country, and it was the first to realize the United Nation Millennium Development Goals. Our poverty relief goals for the 13th Five-year Plan period (2016-20) are as follows: By 2020, the rural poor will be guaranteed food, clothing, compulsory education, basic medical care, and safe housing; in poverty-stricken areas, the growth rate in rural per capita disposable income will surpass the national average growth rate, and major indicators of basic public services will approach the national average. Taking targeted measures to help the impoverished means lifting them out of poverty. We should set a timetable, a step-by-step schedule to complete this poverty relief program, being neither over-conservative nor overimpetuous. To eliminate poverty, the impoverished should rely on their own hard work. There is no mountain top we cannot reach; there is no voyage without a final destination.” President Xi Jinping
Liangshan Yi is affected by historical and geographical factors, a region with abject poverty. By the end of 2019, 805,000 people had been alleviated from poverty, 1,772 villages had been removed from the list of poor villages, and the incidence of poverty had fallen to 4 percent.
Shibadong Village is located in Hunan Province, with 225 households and 939 people. Most of the villagers had lived below the poverty line for years before Shibadong bid farewell to poverty in February 2017. The village is where President Xi Jinping first put forward the idea of “targeted poverty alleviation.”
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The Jinggangshan region is the cradle of the Chinese revolution. Given its mountainous terrain, inconvenient transportation, and weak infrastructure, it was so poor that it required painstaking efforts to escape poverty. On February 26, 2017, Jinggangshan declared that it had gotten rid of poverty, becoming the first region in China to be removed from poor counties and cities since the country introduced an exit mechanism to its poverty alleviation program.