China to end poverty by 2022
Mpho Mokwape | Friday October 27, 2017 13:38
The government has for the past decades been lifting Chinese communities out of poverty, especially in rural areas by building subsidised housing, and in some cases relocating others to areas that have access to services.
The intention of the government, which has encouraged sustainable poverty alleviation by encouraging and providing land for farming to mostly poverty-stricken residents, is to see the poor people and poor areas entering the moderately prosperous society together with the rest of the country before 2022.
In his official speech at the just ended 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC), President Xi Jinping said they would continue to advance poverty reduction by drawing on the joint efforts of government, society and the market. Xi explained that the idea was not to spoon-feed the poor without proper skills transfer, emphasising that the core value will be premised on paying attention to helping the people increase confidence in their own ability to lift themselves out of poverty and seeing that they can access the education they need to do so.
“We will strengthen collaboration on poverty alleviation between the eastern and the western regions, and we will provide focused assistance to areas of extreme poverty. We must ensure that by 2022, all rural areas and residents living below the current poverty line will be out of poverty and also that it is eliminated in all poor counties and regions. Poverty alleviation should reach those who truly need it and deliver genuine outcomes,” he said.
The President maintained that winning the battle against poverty meant that they should mobilise the energies of the whole party, the country and society while continuing to implement targeted poverty reduction and alleviation measures. Xi said this will work on the basis of working mechanism whereby the central government makes overall plans, provincial government takes overall responsibility of ensuring implementation at each level.
He said this alone would improve the social security, and he noted that acting on the policy requirement to help those in need would ensure that a tightly woven safety net is built and the necessary institutions established while working to develop a sustainable multi-tiered social security system that covers the entire population.
“We will improve the basic pension schemes for urban employees, for rural non-working residents and quickly bring pension schemes under a national unified management. We will improve the unified system of basic medical insurance, improve unemployment insurance and work-related injury insurance,” Xi said.
Xi pointed that the government was ready to adhere to the fundamental national policy of gender equality and protecting the legitimate rights and interests of women and minors.
On the quality of employment and education Xi, said employment was pivotal to people’s wellbeing, therefore the need to give it high priority and pursue a proactive employment policy, which will strive to achieve fuller employment and create better quality jobs.
“Strengthening education is fundamental to our pursuit of national rejuvenation. We must therefore give priority to education, speed up modernisation and develop education for the people. We should fully implement the party’s education policy, foster virtue through it and nurture a generation of capable young people who have good and well-rounded moral, intellectual, physical, aesthetical grounding and are well prepared to join the socialist cause.
*Mpho Mokwape covered the weeklong CPC national congress with 3,068 journalists. She's based in Beijing with 26 other African journalists for a programme under the China Africa Press Centre (CAPC)