Poverty Alleviation and Development in Hunan Province

　　【Overview】  Located in the middle reaches of the Yangtze River and the south part of Dongting Lake Basin, Hunan Province has 13 cities, 1 autonomous prefecture and 122 counties (cities, districts). Covering an area of 211,800 square kilometers, it has a population of 68.057 million.

　　There are 20 national key counties and 18 provincial key counties for poverty alleviation and development in Hunan Province, which are mainly scattered in Wuling Mountain areas, Jingshan Mountain areas, Xufeng Mountain areas and Nanling mountain areas, and covered 91,200 square kilometers and 19.54 million people, respectively accounting for 41% and 29% of the total in the province, involving 19 old revolutionary base counties and 17 minority counties. There are a total of 7,000 impoverished villages in the province, accounting for 14.8% of the total administrative villages in the province, including 5453 villages in 38 national and provincial key counties for poverty reduction. According to the statistics of the National Bureau of Statistics, in 2008, the number of low-income people in Hunan was 1.712 million, accounting for 4.3% of the total poor in China.

　　【Investment to poverty alleviation fund projects】 In 2009, a total of 721 million Yuan of anti-poverty funds was put in, of which 581 million Yuan was from the central government, 70 million Yuan came from the provincial government, 36.18 million Yuan from city and prefecture government and 33.7 million from county, city and district government. The amount of the funds was the biggest and the growth rate was the highest in history, with growth rate exceeding 30%. The per capita net income in 20 national key counties for poverty reduction reached 28.21 million Yuan, up 12%.

　　【Entire Village Advancement】 In 2009, Hunan Provincial Party Committee and Provincial Government launched the third round of entire village advancement in 1269 poor villages, giving priority to 760 villages in 10 old revolutionary base areas for national poverty reduction. The provincial, city and county governments sent 3,777 poverty alleviation working groups to serve with the villages and put in a total of 700 million Yuan or so in cash or in kind, of which 270 million Yuan was from the central government, 221 million Yuan from local governments and 210 million Yuan from various departments; and 380 million Yuan was put in the entire village advancement of the “three guarantee” villages. The 52 provincial directly administrated units took the lead to send 97 cadres to support 48 impoverished villages in the poverty reduction and entire village advancement. A total of 26.22 million Yuan was directly invested and 44.51 million Yuan was introduced, averagely 1.36 million Yuan for each village. They implemented 192 projects, introduced 51 talents and 94 technologies and held 96 trainings for 1,860 people. The rural per capita net income in 1,269 villages reached 2,065 Yuan in 2009, 520 Yuan more than that in 2008, up 33%.

　　【Poverty alleviation training】  In 2009, 41.17 million Yuan of financial anti-poverty funds were allocated for the rural labor trainings, mainly vocational training for the “two kinds of backward students” in poor villages and poor farmers under 25. A total of 26,900 people participated in the trainings and 103.4% of the annual plan was achieved.

　　【Poverty alleviation by industrialization】 In terms of the measures for industrial poverty alleviation, Hunan has increased support or 100 national and provincial leading enterprises in agricultural industrialization and arranged loan discount subsidies of 36.1 million Yuan to guide the issuance of loans of 1.05 billion Yuan, which effectively solved enterprises’ problem of shortage of funds. Through the model of “enterprise+ base + farmers + association”, the program covered more than 700,000 poor people and resulted in an increase of more than 800 Yuan in per capita income of local farmers. Xiangxi Tujia and Miao Autonomous Prefecture planted ​​8633.33 hectares of tea, traditional Chinese medicine and featured cash crops, improved orange varieties and low-yield farmland of 11200 hectares, newly developed fruit planting area of ​​4100 hectares and established high-quality citrus base of 1640 ha. Huaihua City supported poor households to breed 110,000 pigs and 365,000 poultries.

　　【Poverty alleviation through infrastructure improvement】 In 2009, a total of 170 million Yuan was allocated for infrastructure construction. The province newly built village-level highroads of 5659 kilometers, completed the construction of highroads for nearly 800 villages, hardened the roads in 700 villages, built bridges of 15,200 meters and solved the travelling problem of more than 2.6 million people. Meanwhile, it constructed 120 large and middle-sized drinking water projects and ponds of 63,900 cubic meters, paved water pipeline of 5,340,000 meters and solved the drinking water problem of 434,000 people and more than 650,000 livestock; newly built and repaired 2,660 irrigation projects, built 4300 high-standard pools and 142 reservoirs, developed farmland of 1083.7 ha that ensure stable yields despite drought or excessive rain, protected farmland of 146,700 ha; erected 2160 high and low-voltage lines of more than 1400 kilometers, installed 87 transformers to solve the electricity difficulty of 48,000 people; opened 172 rural broadcasting stations, newly built and repaired schools of 14,300 square meters and newly built village-level clinics of 11,500 square meters.

　　【Ecological poverty alleviation projects】10 million Yuan of financial anti-poverty funds was arranged for Xiangxi Prefecture for the construction of 11,900 biogas digesters and the development of “pig- biogas digester – fruit (vegetable)” ecological economy, which further improved the production and living conditions of local farmers.

　　【Special poverty alleviation projects】 Longshan County selected lily, and Guzhang County and Yuanling County selected tea as the pilot projects for contiguous development. The total investment to Longshan Lily Pilot Project was 170 million Yuan and the project covered 49 villages and 8,559 poor households. The “mutual funds” model of production development featured “paid loans, mutual development” was established and a total of 22.78 million Yuan was invested to 80 villages in eight pilot counties, of which 12 million Yuan was financial anti-poverty funds and 10.78 million Yuan was the capital stock of farmers, covering 8360 households and 35,000 people. Smooth progress has been made in the construction of the pilot projects in Xinning County and Yongshun County.

　　【Social poverty alleviation】  In 2009, Hunan invited China Ocean Shipping (Group) Company and Orient Asset Group to support the fixed-point poverty alleviation in Yuanling County, Anhua and Shaoyang County. 13 units directly under the central government stayed in Hunan Province to support 17 key counties for poverty alleviation and development. The units directly under the central government stayed in Hunan Province have introduced 71 poverty alleviation projects, and invested and introduced anti-poverty funds of 110 million Yuan. The armed forces in Hunan further increased support for poverty alleviation and development and included the Political Department of the Provincial Military Region into the member units of Hunan Provincial Leading Group for Poverty Alleviation and Development. The Provincial Military Region established the "2211" office, made ​​clear that each of the units with more than 20 divisions is responsible for helping one poverty-stricken village and 10,000 poor families; raised 13 million Yuan for the infrastructure construction in poor old revolutionary base areas; and invested 2 million Yuan to help 1,000 needy university students, creating a new situation for armed forces to participate in the cause of poverty alleviation and development in Hunan. Meanwhile, the “love package” activity was carried out jointly with China Post Hunan Branch and more than 30 million Yuan was raised through more than 1,300 business offices. Japan's JBIC signed the contract for providing loans for the construction of the last batch of projects. 80% of the launched projects have been put into operation, which effectively improved the education, health, market and drinking water facilities of Wulingshan, warmly welcomed by local cadres and masses. The irrigation facility projects launched in Pingjiang and Fanghuang County with German loans of 50 million Yuan have promoted the international cooperation in poverty reduction of Hunan.

　　【Pilot projects for the effective convergence between poverty alleviation and development and the minimum living security system】  Hunan Province paid special attention to “six good jobs”:

　　First, improve the understanding of thinking. In late March, the government organized the whole province to carry out a large-scale investigation on the two systems, covering 86 counties, cities and districts with more than 10,000 participants of the minimum living security system. It has successively held five meetings for the relevant county department leaders and poverty alleviation offices’ directors to fundamentally eliminate the fuzzy knowledge of the personnel of poverty reduction system on the effective convergence between the “two systems”. Secondly, do a good job in target identification. In the process of identifying the targets of the system, the counties all paid attention to public recognition and social recognition and highlighted "three-tier review, the three list publicity". Thirdly, do a good job in team building. Various levels of leading groups and offices were set up under the leadership of the director of the Poverty Alleviation Office. Fourthly, provide abundant poverty alleviation funds. Allocated 16 million Yuan to support the pilot projects in Baojing and Shaoyang County, made clear the direction of the use of anti-poverty funds and arranged relevant training work expenditures. Fifthly, adopted good measures for “three to households and three to specific persons”, i.e.: program for households, planning for households and funding for households; responsibility to specific persons, project implementation for specific persons and contact with specific persons. Sixthly, good supervision and inspection. Project approval power should be given the pilot counties and cities in principle and the provincial government is only responsible for approving the implementation plans and focuses on the inspection, experience summarizing and introduction of advanced models. It has successively summarized and introduced the experience of the pilot projects in Shaoyang and Baojing County for ten times.