Poverty Alleviation and Development in Jiangsu Province

　　【Overview】  Located in the eastern coastal area of China, Jiangsu Province covers an area of 102,600 square kilometers and arable land area of 70.78 million mu and has a population of 77.245 million. It has 13 cities, 106 counties (cities, districts) and 16,669 administrative villages. In 2009, the rural per capita net income was 8004 Yuan, up 9.4% over 2008. By the end of 2007, it had 1.682 million poor households and 4.682 million poor people living below the poverty line of 2500 Yuan.

　　In February 2009, the provincial leading group for poverty alleviation organized relevant personnel to conduct spot check on the poverty alleviation tackling work done in 2008 through random sampling, listening to introduction, survey in villages and households and telephone interviews. The results show: In 2008, a total of 1.1617 million poor people shook off poverty and 93 villages basically completed the task of poverty alleviation problem tackling.

　　【Review of poverty alleviation】  since the Third Plenary Session of the Eleventh Central Committee of the CPC, based on the actual situation, Jiangsu Provincial Party Committee and Government adopted many measures to support the development of economically weak areas in the northern part of the province.

　　In March 1992, focusing on Shuyang County, Jiangsu launched poverty alleviation and development projects in 58 poor villages (towns) with per capita annual net income below 400 Yuan in ten counties in the northern part of the province, and deployed more than 300 organs’ cadres to form the “social education and poverty alleviation” work team for carry out poverty alleviation work in the target counties and towns. After three years’ hard work, great changes have taken place to the 58 impoverished villages (towns).

　　In January 1995, the Provincial Party Committee and Government issued the “Poverty Alleviation Program of Jiangsu Province”. According to the program, the poverty alleviation and development was conducted in two steps: First, from 1995 to 1997, lift 2.08 people out of poverty. Second, from 1998 to 2000, achieve the goal of building a well-off society with county as the unit. After years’ hard work, by the end of 1997, the GDP of ten key counties for poverty alleviation amounted to 29.2 billion Yuan, up 54% over 1994, with an average annual growth of 15.5%, and the rural per capita net income in 68 key poor villages (towns) for poverty alleviation reached 2030 Yuan, all reaching or exceeding the required targets. The first objective of the “Poverty Alleviation Program of Jiangsu Province” was basically achieved.

　　In 1998, the Provincial Party Committee and Government decided to consolidate the poverty reduction results and promote the construction of a well-off society to achieve the second objective, stressed we should take the construction of a well-off society as the overall goal of the rural work in the northern areas of Jiangsu and clearly stated that the government will allow the economically weak areas in the northern part of Jiangsu to maintain “unchanged in four aspects”, namely pro-poor policy, efforts on poverty reduction, poverty alleviation models and poverty relief work teams. Meanwhile, the government created the name list of 510 villages with big difficulties in building a well-off society, and the number of such villages was increased to 1030 in 1999. The provincial, city, county and town governments were responsible for the fixed-point poverty alleviation in these villages and arranged 43 million Yuan of microcredit for the program. On this basis, the Provincial Party Committee and Government allocated various anti-poverty funds of 1.3 billion Yuan to support the implementation of five poverty relief projects, namely rural water sanitation improvement, access to electricity, access to roads (rural road building), safe housing (renovation of dilapidated houses), and the transformation of middle/low-yield farmland. At the end of 2000, according to the comprehensive assessment based on the 15 indexes issued by the National Bureau of Statistics in 1995 and the 12 indexes for the construction of well-off county of Jiangsu Province, the northern area of Jiangsu had basically built a well-off society with county as the unit and people’s life realized the historic leap from subsistence to moderate prosperity.

　　In early 2001, the Provincial Party Committee and Government issued the “Outline of the ‘10th Five-Year Plan’ for Poverty Alleviation and Development in Jiangsu”. By the end of 2005, the GDP of five cities in the northern areas of Jiangsu reached 361.714 billion Yuan, with an average annual growth of 12.5% during the “10th Five-Year Plan” period, achieving general financial revenue of 38.983 billion Yuan, with an average annual increase of 24.5%; and the rural per capita net income reached 4297 Yuan, with an average annual growth of 6.5%. The government put in 560 million Yuan for the renovation of dilapidated houses, and more than 330,000 households’ dilapidated houses were rebuilt.

　　In April 2006, the Provincial Party Committee and Government issued the “Outline of the ‘11th Five-Year Plan’ for Poverty Alleviation and Development in Jiangsu” and put forward that the poverty alleviation and development must shift the focus to villages and households. The government organized the project of “Poverty Alleviation with the Involvement of Many Villages and Households” to support 1011 economically weak villages in 19 economically weak counties. By the end of 2007, the number of the low-income people with annual net income below 1500 Yuan was reduced from 3.1 million at the end of 2005 to 2.01 million by the end of 2007; the rural per capita net income of the 1011 economically weak villages reached 2984 Yuan, up 14.2%, and 48.2% of the poor rural households no longer lived below the former provincial poverty line.

　　In 2008, according to the requirements of “one increase and two improvements” put forward by the 17th CPC Central Committee, the Provincial Party Committee and Government decided to organize the implementation of poverty alleviation tackling projects in the whole province and issued the “Opinions on the Implementation of Poverty Alleviation Program” (Su Fa［2008］No. 12) and clearly put forward that we must basically eliminate absolute poverty in three to five years.

　　【Financial incentives and subsidies】 To accelerate the process of poverty alleviation, Jiangsu provincial government provided anti-poverty funds of 2.76 billion Yuan as financial incentives and subsidies. In 2008, it issued 550 million Yuan; in 2009, it allocated 900 million Yuan, and in 2010, all the remaining funds were issued. The provincial government formulated and issued the “Management Methods for Financial incentives and subsidies for Key Problem Tackling in Poverty Alleviation” and made clear the funds’ use direction, allocation procedures, supervision, incentives, etc to ensure the fund play its role as soon as possible. The cities and counties also increased financial investment. The Provincial Party Committee and Government demanded local governments to give priority to economically weak regions in the allocation of agriculture-related funds and projects and make sure the funds benefit economically weak villages and poverty-stricken households.

　　【Micro-credit for poverty alleviation】 Since the launching of micro-credit for poverty alleviation in 1998, the province has issued a total of 4.807 billion Yuan for the program. To adapt to the problem tackling in poverty reduction, Jiangsu Provincial Party Committee and Government decided to liberate the scale of micro-credit for poverty relief since 2008 to meet the needs of rural households in the development of production. During the two years, the province issued micro-credit of 2.02 billion Yuan in total to benefit 201,900 rural households.

　　【Filing of information of rural poor】  As of the end of August, 2008, the county-level registration, recording and summary work had been done, and the provincial poverty alleviation office, financial department, department of civil affairs, statistic bureau and Jiangsu Investigation Team jointly issued documents to announce the major data of the files on rural poor’s information. So far, all the poor living below the low-income line of 2500 Yuan and all poor villages, counties and towns have been registered with separate records.

　　【Entire Village Advancement】 Since 2006, Jiangsu Province launched the “menu style” poverty alleviation by entire village advancement in 1011 provincial economically weak villages and invested 400,000 Yuan in each village. The project construction was completed in 2008, a total of 404 million Yuan was put in and more than 5,000 projects were implemented. The entire village advancement program mainly supports poor rural households to develop facility greenhouse, economic forest and fruit, livestock breeding and other efficient agricultural and related facility projects.

　　【Fixed-point poverty alleviation】  In 2008, in accordance with the requirements of Jiangsu Provincial Party Committee and Government, based on the number of poor people in economically weak counties in the northern part of the province, Jiangsu government identified 11 counties (districts)including Feng County and Suining as the key counties for problem tackling in poverty reduction and the provincial party committee sent poverty relief work teams to provide assistance in the poverty reduction in these counties. 165 cadres were deployed to form 11 poverty relief work teams to support the poverty alleviation in the key counties and the team leaders are the department principals. Except the team leader and vice leader, all the team members went to act as village’s political instructors and stayed in the villages to carry out fixed-point poverty alleviation. The cities, counties (cities, districts) in the northern area of Jiangsu set up city and county-level poverty alleviation work teams and sent more than 1000 cadres to stay in the village and support the poverty alleviation.

　　【Poverty alleviation training】  In 2008 and 2009, the provincial financial department allocated special funds of 50 million Yuan for trainings of 100,000 poor labors from the northern areas of Jiangsu. The subsidies were issued in the form of “training coupons”. During the two years, a total of 224,000 poor rural labors received the trainings and 95% of them achieved transfer of employment.

　　【Poverty alleviation by industrialization】 It focused on the poverty alleviation by building partnership between large-scale industrial and commercial enterprises and economically weak villages. A total of 1116 industrial and commercial enterprises built partnership with all the economically weak villages for poverty reduction, and 27 provincial key state-owned enterprises, 52 top-100 industrial and commercial enterprises, 65 top-100 private businesses, 250 national and provincial agricultural industrialization enterprises and some joint ventures participated in the poverty alleviation.

　　【Poverty alleviation measures】  1．Strengthen the "five-party linked" support mechanism. Jiangsu began to practice the "five-party linked" support system in provincial organs, colleges and universities (research institutes), large state-owned enterprises, the counties (cities, districts) in the southern areas of Jiangsu and the counties in the northern areas of Jiangsu in 1992. For 18 consecutive years, it has deployed a number of cadres from the relevant units covered by "five-party linked" support system to compose the provincial poverty relief work teams for poverty alleviation in key counties. With key counties as the units, it founded the "five-party linked" poverty alleviation coordination teams with the principals of the provincial organs’ comprehensive departments and held annual meetings to arrange the implementation of poverty alleviation projects and funds. Since the implementation of problem tackling for poverty reduction in 2008, nearly 20,000 leaders from the provincial, city and county’s relevant units went to work in the poverty alleviation spots and more than 800 million Yuan of anti-poverty funds were provided.

　　2．Implement the "five-one" mechanism for poverty alleviation in villages. Jiangsu adopted the "five-one" mechanism for poverty alleviation in villages, featured “one poverty alleviation instructor in village, one technology commissioner provided, one industrial and commercial enterprise for assistance, one rich village in cooperative partnership and one leading industry”. In 2008, the provincial, city and county organs and units deployed 1438 outstanding young cadres to support the fixed-point poverty alleviation for two years. Based on the actual situation of each village, science and technology departments deployed a number of technology personnel to act as technology commissioners in the 1011 economically weak villages to give instruction to the development of featured industries. The government organized local developed towns (villages) and the developed towns (villages) in the southern part of Jiangsu to build partnership with the economically weak villages for poverty alleviation, giving priority to the partnership building between large industrial and commercial enterprises with the economically weak villages. In the province, a total of 1116 industrial and commercial enterprises have built twinning relationship in various forms with all the economically weak villages. Relying on the agricultural parks, cooperative economic organizations and leading enterprises, the government helps the economically weak villages to form the featured industries of “one product for one village” and “one product for a few villages”.

　　3．Improve the two-wheel-drive mechanism for development-oriented and relief-oriented poverty reduction. Based on the file data, the government implemented development-oriented poverty reduction on the poor households with the ability to work and launched relief-oriented poverty alleviation program for the poor households without the ability to work. It constantly enhanced the minimum living allowances and improved the mechanism for the increase of minimum living allowances. Taking county (city, district) as the unit, based on 20-25% of the rural per capita net income of the previous year, the government determined the minimum living allowance standards and increased the standards with the improvement of rural per capita net income. In 2009, the basic living allowances for the poor without the ability to work in central and northern rural areas of Jiangsu were respectively 3438 Yuan, 2499 Yuan and 1599 Yuan. For the regions with heavy task of poverty reduction, based on the relevant requirements, the government adopted the inverted method in determining the minimum living allowances for rural areas and ensured that the minimum living allowances for the poor households without the ability to work will reach 2500 Yuan in 2012.

　　4．Establish the endogenous development mechanism for economically weak villages. First, strengthen the construction of “dual strength” leadership. Through training, internal election, redeployment, college student dispatching and other measures, the government strived to enhance the “dual driving forces” of the “two committees” of the villages. In 2007, it took the lead to dispatch one college graduate to enrich the “two committees” of each of the 1011 economically weak villages. Secondly, improve the self-development capacity of poor households. On the one hand, it guided the cadres and masses of economically weak villages to build up the spirit of self-reliance and hard struggle and enhance the determination and confidence in self-development. On the other hand, the government strived to increase the income of farmers and lift them out of poverty through industrial projects and the assistance from capable people and cooperative organizations, through employment trainings and assistance of industrial and commercial enterprises and university student village cadres, etc. Thirdly, enhance the village-level collective economic strength. Through the development of local resources, liquidizing remnant assets, land reclamation, the development of village property paid service providing, etc, the province strived to open up new sources of revenue. Fourthly, speed up the construction of village-level multi-service centers. Raise funds in many ways to help economically weak villages build multi-service centers to provide convenience services, technology services, medical services, sports activity area and party-masses counseling system. In 2009, the provincial financial department issued 120,000 Yuan for each of 517 economically weak villages without service centers (62.04 million Yuan in total) to ensure the full coverage of service centers in all the 1011 economically weak villages by the end of 2009.

　　5．Establish a mechanism for the management of anti-poverty funds. First, make clear the investment direction. Ensure that all anti-poverty funds are used for economically weak villages and poor households to directly promote the village-level collectively economic development and the income growth of poor rural households. Secondly, make strict procedures. Implement poverty alleviation project selection, reporting and identification procedures and the operation flow of the project funds. Thirdly, operate openly. Relief fund projects are announced to the public and villagers in various forms to receive the public supervision for open operation. Fourthly, good supervision: Audit department must make annual audit on the anti-poverty funds and seriously deal with problems according to relevant laws and regulations.