Poverty Alleviation and Development in Chongqing

　　【Overview】 Under the guidance of the scientific outlook on development, based on the construction of “Five Chongqing” and opening of inland highlands, aiming to enhance people’s livelihood, Chongqing highlighted entire village advancement and ten thousand Yuan of income growth for the rural households living in the “two wings” regions (two wings: Wanzhou-centered town cluster in the Three Gorges Reservoir Area and Qianjiang-centered town cluster in the southeastern areas of Chongqing), braved difficulties and seized the opportunity to vigorously promote the coordinated economic and social development in poor rural areas of Chongqing, making major breakthroughs in a number of indicators. 1.115 billion Yuan of anti-poverty funds were issued by governments above city level, 162 million Yuan more than that of the previous year, up 17%; and 1.336 billion Yuan of social anti-poverty funds were raised. Both the above two figures exceeded 1 billion Yuan for the first time. Chongqing comprehensively overfulfiled the annual task for poverty alleviation and development: In 2010, there was a reduction of 150,000 in the number of rural poor and the safe drinking water problem of 250,000 rural poor was addressed; the government newly built and repaired village-level highroads of 5,100 kilometers, completed off-site poverty reduction relocation and ecological relocation of 84,600 people, completed rural poor labor transfer and practical agricultural technical training of 115,200 people and lifted 266 impoverished villages out of poverty; the rural per capita net income of key counties reached 4,100 Yuan, up 15%; new progress was made in the economic and social development of impoverished areas; it won the first prize in the performance evaluation of national poverty alleviation and development for two consecutive years and was rewarded 15 million Yuan.

　　【Entire village advancement】  The first batch of 266 poor villages all reached the standard of  "seven possessions, four accesses and three solutions" (seven possessions: stable income, basic security, basic knowledge, certain skills, stable housing, service center and good leadership; Four accesses: access to highroads, access to electricity, access to telephone line and access to radio and TV program; three solutions: a stable solution to food and clothing problem, a basic solution to safe drinking water problem and a comprehensive solution to ecological and poverty reduction relocation problem) and were all lifted out of poverty. 78 impoverished villages reached the new rural construction standards. In 2010, steady progress was made in the poverty reduction of 450 villages. Based on the features of poverty reduction industries, the impoverished villages increased investment in poverty relief and formed the industrial structure with “chicken, cattle, sheep, hare and bee raising, forestry, fruit and medicine industry, and mulberry and vegetable planting” as the core, combined with the development of other industries. In 2010, it introduced 152 leading enterprises, issued 2000 Yuan of production capital to each poor rural household and basically achieved the goal of projects for all households and income growth of all families. 3,759 professional agricultural cooperatives in Chongqing were designated to support 112 supermarkets and five trade fairs and 12 matchmaking meetings were held to open market and increase channels for income growth of farmers. Meanwhile, 10 agricultural products of Chongqing successfully registered geographical indications, which further increased the added value of agricultural products.

　　【Ten thousand-Yuan income growth projects for poor households in the "Two Wings" areas】Taking farmers as the main body, leading enterprises as leadership, market consumption as the guidance and science and technology as support, Chongqing put a great deal of efforts on the construction of 10,000-Yuan income growth projects for poor households in the "Two Wings" areas. The rural per capita net income of 18 key districts and counties of Chongqing increased by 15%, 6 percentage points above national average; the per capita net income of the poor households in the  "two wings" areas increased by 800 Yuan, reaching 4050 Yuan. Key industries for poverty alleviation witnessed rapid development. In 2010, it increased orange tree planting area of 120,000 mu, vegetable planting area of 400,000 mu and forest area of 2.7 million mu; bred 400,000 cattle, 1.3 million sheep, 75 million poultries and 500,000 barrels of bees; and increased traditional Chinese herbal medicine planting area of 1 million mu. In addition, in the “two wings” districts and counties, Chongqing invested a total of 665 million Yuan of financial anti-poverty funds and issued discount loans of 1.234 million Yuan for poverty alleviation leading enterprises. To promote the development of poverty reduction industries, it implemented the six-word strategy of "Ge Shi Bai Qian Wan Yi" and "Six Actions" of development of poverty alleviation leading industries, expansion of investment introduction, enhancement of science and technology, financial cooperation, agricultural product sales promotion and caring volunteers, laying a solid foundation for the poor rural households in the "Two Wings" areas to achieve an increase of ten thousand Yuan in their income in three years.

　　【Open poverty alleviation】 Open anti-poverty work is first reflected by increasing efforts to attract investment. In 2010, Chongqing invited external investment of more than 14 billion Yuan through signing contracts and 1.3 billion Yuan was issued. To this end, Chongqing consciously organized Chongqing exhibition of China's poverty alleviation and development figure show and signed 22 projects worth 5 billion Yuan. In addition, we went to Guangdong, Shandong, Xiamen, Zhuhai and Fujian to introduce investment for poverty alleviation for six times, successfully held the “First Poverty Reduction forum of Traditional Chinese Medicine Industry and Investment Fair for Traditional Chinese Medicine Industry” and signed contracts worth 2.375 billion Yuan, covering more than 30 types of traditional Chinese medicines.

　　【Social poverty alleviation】 In 2010, Chongqing attached great importance to the improvement of livelihood of the poor and issued more than 260 million Yuan of special funds for the “one circle” to help “two wings” areas (One circle refers to the urban economic zone with main city as the core and one hour-commuting distance as the radius). 18 poverty alleviation groups were designated to support 187 impoverished villages and provided direct investment of 256 million Yuan. The state adjusted the partners of Chongqing in East-West pairing-off poverty alleviation and designated 14 prefecture-level cities of Shandong Province instead of Zhuhai and Xiamen to provide counterpart support for 14 key national counties in Chongqing.

　　【Labor transfer training - Rain Plan】Taking the development opportunity of Chongqing, focusing on the development of emerging industries and practical technology for ten thousand-Yuan income growth, Chongqing vigorously carried out job training and entrepreneurship training. In 2010, it invested training funds of 52.8 million Yuan, organized trainings for 115,200 people and transferred employments of 10,000 people. Giving full play to the role of 11 base schools, it held trainings for more than 7000 “Chongqing Rain Plan Technicians” and over 95% of them obtained the “two certificates” (Training certificate issued by the training school and skills certificate issued by labor bureau); organized entrepreneurship trainings for more than 6,700 people and 85% of the trainees launched their own businesses.

　　【Relocation-based poverty alleviation】 Taking the good opportunity of building a livable city of Chongqing, the government strengthened the integration of resources for ecological relocation, new housing of Chongqing, small town construction and renovation of folk houses and vigorously implemented poverty reduction ecological relocation with support from reform policy such as vote trading, land improvement and mortgage of "three powers". In 2010, Chongqing integrated 421 million Yuan of various funds, completed the ecological relocation and relocation-based poverty reduction of 84600 people, implemented pilot entire village relocation projects of 12 impoverished villages and built a number of new immigrant villages. The scale of the relocation was the largest and the effect of the relocation was the most obvious over the years.

　　【Management of anti-poverty funds】 A whole set of procedures and regulations were developed and practiced for the management of funds, supervision and inspection as well as public participation, steady progress was made in mechanism innovation and special management of anti-poverty funds, major breakthroughs were made in a number of indicators for poverty reduction and Chongqing won the first prize for two consecutive years in the performance evaluation of national poverty alleviation and development. Chongqing put emphasis on supervisor team building, organized 7 trainings for 450 village-level voluntary poverty reduction supervisors, set up and improved the village-level voluntary poverty reduction supervisor teams in 2,000 impoverished villages and carried out supervision and inspection on 235 poverty relief projects in Chongqing.

　　【Poverty alleviation mechanism innovation】 First, it was the first and the only municipality (province) in China to set relative poverty line. Approved by the 60th executive meeting of the municipal government, Chongqing set a relative poverty line in 2010 based on the proportion of 30% of rural per capita net income of the city. It fully reflected the spirit of the Third Plenary Session of the 17th CPC Central Committee –"Poverty Alleviation and Development is a long-term historical task", made the poverty relief work assessment system more scientific and was of great strategic significance to accelerating the process of integrated urban and rural construction, improving people’s livelihood and building a moderately prosperous society. Second, it promulgated and implemented the "Regulations on Rural Poverty Alleviation of Chongqing". The "Regulations" was approved by the 17th meeting of the 3rd Standing Committee of Chongqing Municipal People’s Congress on May 14, 2010 and put into effect on August 1, 2010. The "Regulations" is divided into eight chapters and 56 articles, including general principles, objects of poverty reduction, pro-poor measures, project management, the use of funds, social poverty alleviation, legal responsibilities and supplementary provisions. The promulgation and implementation of the "Regulations" is of great realistic significance and far-reaching historical significance to promoting poverty reduction in poor rural areas, lifting poor population out of poverty and accelerating the integrated urban and rural poverty alleviation and development. Third, it introduced standardized documents on the management of capital projects. Chongqing issued the "Implementation Methods for Management of Financial Anti-poverty Funds", "Opinions on the Supervision and Management of Anti-poverty Funds of Chongqing", "Regulations on the Use of Financial Anti-poverty Funds and the Procedures for Project Implementation", "Measures for the Management of Village-level Voluntary Supervisors of Poverty Alleviation and Development", etc. These standardized documents played an important role in strengthening the management of anti-poverty funds and strengthening the “two targets” (target at poor rural areas and target at poor people) system of poverty alleviation. Fourth, it further expanded pilot area for village-level mutual funds. In 2010, 104 million Yuan of financial anti-poverty funds were issued, the number of pilot villages reached 695 and the timely repayment rate reached 98.3%. Meanwhile, Chongqing invested 45 million Yuan for contiguous development and increased five national pilot regions and two municipal pilot areas for contiguous development. Fifth, it implemented pilot projects for the convergence of two systems in 33 districts and counties. In accordance with the unified arrangements of the state, Chongqing started pilot work for the convergence of two systems in 33 districts and counties with poverty reduction task in March 2010 and completed the work at the end of December 2010. Through the "eight-step and four-publicity" recognition program and the "scoring line" approach, Chongqing identified a total of 468,200 poor households and 1.4528 million poor people – targets of poverty reduction, and was the first to develop the management system for the convergence of two systems. The pilot project of the World Bank’s fifth poverty reduction project was titled as Advanced Project.