（IV）Challenges for Poverty Alleviation and Development

　　At present, China is still in the primary stage of socialism, the overall level of economic and social development is not high and there are still deep-seated contradictions restricting the development of impoverished areas and poor people. Under the dual background of development phase transition and faster structural adjustment, the old and new conflicts are intertwined and there are an increasing number of problems of imbalance, instability and inharmony, which has greatly increased the difficulty of poverty alleviation and development work.

　　First, large-scale poverty and increasingly heavy pressure of preventing returning to poverty Based on the new poverty line, there are now 35.97 million poor people in China, accounting for 3.8% of the total rural residents. In addition to the traditional causes, market risk has become another important cause of poverty and poverty-returning. The international financial crisis has highlighted the vulnerability of the poor in market fluctuations.

　　Secondly, income gap is still widening and the phenomenon of relative poverty is prominent. Urban-rural income gap is still widening and the income gap of farmers between the east and the central and western areas, and the internal income gap within regions are also expanding. In poor areas, the rapid growth of county revenue in some counties has covered up the low growth of farmers' income, urban prosperity has covered up rural backwardness, and the wealth of few rich households has masked off the low income of the majority of people.

　　Thirdly, severe imbalance in development and serious problem of special poverty The poverty in West China is mainly in minority areas and border regions, the poverty in Central China is mainly in the old revolutionary base areas and mountain areas, and the poverty in the eastern areas, except a few contiguous impoverished regions, is mainly reflected the widening internal development gap. Special regions and special poor people are always the most arduous task of the poverty alleviation work. According to the poverty monitoring data of National Bureau of Statistics, in 2008, the poor in five minority areas, Yunnan, Guizhou and Qinghai accounted for 39.6% of the total rural poor in China, showing an upward trend, and the incidence of poverty was 11.0%, 6.8 percentage points higher than the national average.

　　Fourthly, facing serious threat of natural disasters, the disaster preparedness is inadequate. Poverty-stricken areas are usually prone to natural disasters. According to statistics, the probability for poverty-stricken areas to suffer from severe natural disasters is five times that of other areas. Global climate change has increased extreme weather events and will have a more apparent impact on ecologically fragile poor areas. The disaster preparedness capacity of impoverished areas is obviously insufficient. In many ecologically fragile areas, the economic and social development lags behind and agricultural production is severely threatened by disasters. Despite a series of measures such as poverty alleviation by relocation have been taken, farmers’ livelihood problems have not been solved steadily yet.