Home » Opinion » Chinese Views
Rural poor benefit from poverty relief
By Liang Saiyu, Zhou Zhou and Li Huaiyan |
February 7, 2012, Tuesday
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Print Edition
Print Edition
AFTER trekking dozens of rugged, rocky miles to gather firewood from China's southernmost virgin forest, Blang women doze around a fire in mountainous Bulangshan that borders Myanmar. The scene is like an exotic setting on another planet from "Avatar."
These women don't know that China raised its poverty threshold late last year to 2,300 yuan (US$362) in terms of the annual net income of farmers.
They're unaware that the central government now acknowledges any Chinese earning less than this is considered to be living in "poverty." That figure represents an 80 percent jump from 2010 to one that almost matches the common international poverty line, US$1 a day.
Nevertheless, they are a perfect example of the type of Chinese rural community the government aims to benefit with the poverty-level move. The Blang ethnic group, estimated to number 20,000, have already felt positive effects of the government's economic policies in recent times. And this is the start of another big year in which officials will aim to boost their income and bring them up to speed with China's social reforms.
They are one of many groups for whom earning 2,300 yuan annually seems like a distant prospect. The new standard brings the number of Chinese people classed as poor to 100 million, a figure that poses daunting challenges to the government's ongoing poverty relief efforts, especially in impoverished border areas like Bulangshan.
Many changes
Nevertheless, things are developing fast and with a focus on melding modernization with important cultural concerns.
The Blangs are believed to be the world's earliest tea growers. With domestic consumption driving Pu'er tea prices up by around 30 percent in 2011, these tea-growers are starting to shake off poverty and looking forward to more modern lives.
Four years ago, they got television reception for the first time and learned what they could expect from the nation's breakneck economic growth. And these Theravada Buddhists say they find economic benefits as important as the spiritual richness they seek in the temple.
Despite their meager earnings, villagers managed to raise 50,000 yuan (US$7,895) to rebuild the temple in 2010.
Remote Bulang village in the mountains remained a primitive farming society in the 1950s while the rest of the country underwent an economic transformation.
In a gradual poverty alleviation process, the Blang people scattered over Mt Bulang have learned to grow rubber and start tea businesses since the 1980s.
New farming skills helped people to leave behind lives of hunger, though poverty remains. In 2010, 80 percent of the Bulang villagers lived below the poverty line of the time, an annual per capita net income of 1,704 yuan.
Since it started in 2000, the major anti-poverty program has invested more than 30 million yuan to set up tea and rubber industries and improve infrastructure such as roads, housing, medical care and schools.
Shabby huts have been replaced by housing with electricity and telephones in almost all settlements.
Left behind
Despite decades of China's reform and opening-up drive that boosted incomes in eastern and southern coastal areas, far-flung areas such as Bulangshan lag behind.
In 1999 the central government launched the West Development program to begin to narrow the wealth gap between regions.
As a result of these efforts, some villagers were able to move into new houses and watch the Spring Festival Gala TV show like other Chinese people.
But the poverty line readjustment has focused attention on standards of living of ethnic groups.
Moreover, last year's high inflation partly offset the increased earnings from tea.
And, since forests were nationalized in 2007 and placed under state protection, the Blangs' slash-and-burn agriculture has ended, requiring the government to grant food relief.
Meanwhile, China has announced more plans to grant more aid to rural people, following President Hu Jintao's call at a poverty-alleviation conference on November 29 to further the drive to eradicate poverty.
"Access to compulsory education, basic medical care and housing should be ensured," President Hu said, pledging that the nation's impoverished will also no longer have to worry about food and clothing.
Moreover, Yunnan Province is considering doubling farmers' annual income by 2015 and raising the annual net income growth of those in extreme poverty above the national average by 2020, according to provincial data.
The authors are Xinhua writers.
These women don't know that China raised its poverty threshold late last year to 2,300 yuan (US$362) in terms of the annual net income of farmers.
They're unaware that the central government now acknowledges any Chinese earning less than this is considered to be living in "poverty." That figure represents an 80 percent jump from 2010 to one that almost matches the common international poverty line, US$1 a day.
Nevertheless, they are a perfect example of the type of Chinese rural community the government aims to benefit with the poverty-level move. The Blang ethnic group, estimated to number 20,000, have already felt positive effects of the government's economic policies in recent times. And this is the start of another big year in which officials will aim to boost their income and bring them up to speed with China's social reforms.
They are one of many groups for whom earning 2,300 yuan annually seems like a distant prospect. The new standard brings the number of Chinese people classed as poor to 100 million, a figure that poses daunting challenges to the government's ongoing poverty relief efforts, especially in impoverished border areas like Bulangshan.
Many changes
Nevertheless, things are developing fast and with a focus on melding modernization with important cultural concerns.
The Blangs are believed to be the world's earliest tea growers. With domestic consumption driving Pu'er tea prices up by around 30 percent in 2011, these tea-growers are starting to shake off poverty and looking forward to more modern lives.
Four years ago, they got television reception for the first time and learned what they could expect from the nation's breakneck economic growth. And these Theravada Buddhists say they find economic benefits as important as the spiritual richness they seek in the temple.
Despite their meager earnings, villagers managed to raise 50,000 yuan (US$7,895) to rebuild the temple in 2010.
Remote Bulang village in the mountains remained a primitive farming society in the 1950s while the rest of the country underwent an economic transformation.
In a gradual poverty alleviation process, the Blang people scattered over Mt Bulang have learned to grow rubber and start tea businesses since the 1980s.
New farming skills helped people to leave behind lives of hunger, though poverty remains. In 2010, 80 percent of the Bulang villagers lived below the poverty line of the time, an annual per capita net income of 1,704 yuan.
Since it started in 2000, the major anti-poverty program has invested more than 30 million yuan to set up tea and rubber industries and improve infrastructure such as roads, housing, medical care and schools.
Shabby huts have been replaced by housing with electricity and telephones in almost all settlements.
Left behind
Despite decades of China's reform and opening-up drive that boosted incomes in eastern and southern coastal areas, far-flung areas such as Bulangshan lag behind.
In 1999 the central government launched the West Development program to begin to narrow the wealth gap between regions.
As a result of these efforts, some villagers were able to move into new houses and watch the Spring Festival Gala TV show like other Chinese people.
But the poverty line readjustment has focused attention on standards of living of ethnic groups.
Moreover, last year's high inflation partly offset the increased earnings from tea.
And, since forests were nationalized in 2007 and placed under state protection, the Blangs' slash-and-burn agriculture has ended, requiring the government to grant food relief.
Meanwhile, China has announced more plans to grant more aid to rural people, following President Hu Jintao's call at a poverty-alleviation conference on November 29 to further the drive to eradicate poverty.
"Access to compulsory education, basic medical care and housing should be ensured," President Hu said, pledging that the nation's impoverished will also no longer have to worry about food and clothing.
Moreover, Yunnan Province is considering doubling farmers' annual income by 2015 and raising the annual net income growth of those in extreme poverty above the national average by 2020, according to provincial data.
The authors are Xinhua writers.
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