China to relocate two million people this year to banish poverty

Beijing

The mass relocation of people is a strategy targeted at lifting 10 million citizens out of poverty by 2020. Some of the villagers will move to areas with better social services, such as schools and hospitals, while others in remote areas will move to places with better roads and water supply, the official, Liu Yongfu, told a briefing. The numbers would be stepped up gradually and may eventually hit 3 million, added Liu, who heads the cabinet’s Leading Group Office of  Poverty Alleviation and Development.

Despite two decades of rapid economic growth, poverty remains a huge issue in China, mainly in rural areas, where a lack of jobs drives out adults, leaving behind children and the elderly, often with limited access to schools and healthcare. China’s poor, who make up about 5 percent of a population of nearly 1.4 billion, live mostly in the countryside, and earn less than 2,300 yuan ($362) a year, government and state media say.

Since kicking off market reforms in 1978, China has lifted more than 800 million people out of poverty, but it remains a developing country and the reforms are incomplete, the World Bank says.