Ruan Chengfa (center), Party chief of Yunnan province, shares the poverty reduction progress in the province at a news conference in Kunming, Yunnan province, on Dec 8, 2020. (WU XIAOHUI / CHINA DAILY)
Officials from Yunnan province on Tuesday announced that all of its impoverished rural residents have been lifted above the current poverty line.
More than 8.8 million rural residents in the province were living in poverty in 2012.
The fact that all impoverished counties in the province have been lifted out of poverty bears special significance as Yunnan once had the most poverty-stricken counties of any provincial-level region
All 88 counties in the province that were designated by the government as poverty-stricken have shrugged off absolute poverty, as have 8,502 impoverished villages, said Ruan Chengfa, newly appointed Party chief of Yunnan.
Ruan released the figures at a news conference hosted by the State Council Information Office in Kunming, capital of Yunnan, to share the province's achievements on poverty alleviation work over the past five years.
The fact that all impoverished counties in the province have been lifted out of poverty bears special significance as Yunnan once had the most poverty-stricken counties of any provincial-level region.
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Since the central authorities released a list of 832 impoverished counties across the country in 2014, Yunnan has become a main focal point of the nation's poverty alleviation efforts.
According to Ruan, the provincial fiscal fund dedicated to poverty elimination increased from 1.35 billion yuan (US$206 million) in 2015 to 7.65 billion yuan in 2020.
"To guarantee necessary funding, governments at all levels in Yunnan have kept tight budgets to ensure the availability of funds required for poverty elimination," Ruan said.
Bordering Myanmar, Laos and Vietnam, Yunnan has vast mountainous areas that make up 94 percent of its land, and some of the most entrenched poverty in the province was found in mountainous counties mainly inhabited by ethnic groups with smaller populations.
After President Xi Jinping pledged that "in building a moderately prosperous society in an all-around way, no ethnic group shall be left behind" during his visit to poverty-stricken areas in the province in 2015, the provincial government followed Xi's call and put more efforts into the development of the ethnic groups.
"In 2012, 46 percent of the 8.8 million people under the poverty line in Yunnan were ethnic groups with smaller populations. By achieving the goal of lifting all counties out of poverty, 25 smaller ethnic groups have also escaped it," Ruan said.
Until recently, some ethnic groups were practicing relatively primitive ways of life, including the Derung, an ethnic group of 6,000 people that mainly live in the Nujiang Lisu autonomous prefecture.
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"In Nujiang and Dechen Tibet autonomous prefectures, we have offered 14 years of free education for smaller ethnic groups, including waiving tuition, and even accommodation and food are now free for the students. In those prefectures, nobody would lose the chance to get an education because of poverty," Ruan said.
Raising employment by obtaining jobs in other regions has played a key role in poverty alleviation as the province enters the final stretch of its poverty relief campaign.
According to Wang Yubo, acting governor of Yunnan, more than 3.18 million laborers have left the province to work in other regions.
Meanwhile, under the pairing-up policy that encourages support from other economically active regions, Shanghai and Guangdong province invested 14.1 billion yuan in financial assistance and implemented over 6,600 supporting projects over the past five years, according to Ruan.
