East China’s Jiangsu province convened a meeting on Monday to commend the role models of poverty reduction as the 4th National Poverty Alleviation Day will fall on Tuesday. 10 individual role models of poverty reduction and 13 collective ones were commended at the meeting.
Li Qiang, secretary of the Jiangsu CPC Committee, and Wu Zhenlong, governor of Jiangsu, gave written instructions for the further efforts to be made in poverty reduction.
Yang Yue, vice governor of Jiangsu, delivered a speech at the meeting.
The top leaders said local officials should always bear in mind poverty-stricken groups and work for them with their whole heart and soul.
Local Party and government authorities should place more emphasis on the mission of helping people out of poverty, especially people in impoverished regions, the three top leaders said.
They also said the authorities should strive to find the right way to bring the people out of poverty by adjusting policies to conditions in a scientific manner.
The Party and government leaders said policies designed to support agriculture, rural areas and farmers and alleviate poverty must be implemented fully, calling the embezzlement of poverty-alleviation funds an "intolerable crime."
The top leaders remarked that the central authorities are highly concerned about poverty-alleviation work, urging all local Party and government organs to fulfill their responsibilities well to bring people out of poverty quickly.
China aims to complete the building of a moderately prosperous society by the end of 2020, with a sharp decrease in the number of poverty-stricken residents in the country, according to a report from the 18th CPC National Congress.
China will escalate efforts to boost economic and social development in old revolutionary bases, minority regions, border regions and impoverished regions, deepening the poverty-alleviation drive in rural areas.
Achieving this goal will undoubtedly be a long and arduous task, according to experts. Based on the current poverty line of 2,300 yuan in annual net income per capita, China has 128 million impoverished people in rural areas, accounting for 13.4 percent of the population in the countryside.
Over the past three decades China has achieved great progress in alleviating poverty, a fact recognized by the international community.
