Poverty Alleviation of Ministry of Culture

　　【Overview】In 2010, the party committee of Ministry of Culture attached great importance to poverty alleviation. Adhering to the guiding line of “poverty alleviation by cultural development” and based on culture resources and major culture projects, in order to improve the public cultural service system, it increased financial support to accelerate project construction and continued to conduct fixed-point poverty alleviation to actively boost the cultural construction of impoverished areas.

　　【Construction of libraries and culture centers】In the “10th Five-Year Plan” period, the central finance, through transferred payment, subsidized 480 million Yuan to 1,086 county libraries and culture centers across China. As of the end of 2010, 592 national impoverished counties had got 577 libraries and 592 culture centers, and the coverage rates were respectively 97.5% and 100%.

　　To effectively solve the problem of backward equipment of county libraries and cultural centers to make them capable for providing basic services, from 2009 to 2012, the central government planned to invest about 1.097 billion Yuan for the renovation of 2,517 county libraries and cultural centers whose area is not up to standard, aiming to provide them with certain conditions for effective public cultural services for the masses. In the implementation of the program, based on the actual situation of national poverty-stricken counties, the Ministry of Culture gave appropriate priority to national poor counties in the declaration of renovation projects and allocation of repairing funds for county libraries and cultural centers.

　　【Construction of township comprehensive culture stations】To reinforce basic culture base construction, in 2007, the Ministry of Culture, jointly with National Development and Reform Commission, developed the “Planning for Construction of Township Comprehensive Culture Station in China in the ‘11th Five-Year Plan’ Period”. According to the planning, in the “11th Five-Year Plan” period, the central government would invest 3.948 billion Yuan to subsidize the construction of 26,700 township comprehensive culture stations across China, and achieved the goal of “comprehensive culture station in each town”. 8,342 township comprehensive culture stations in 592 national impoverished counties were built, accounting for 32% of the total. In plan implementation, considering the harsh conditions, inconvenient traffic and backward economic development of poverty-stricken counties, we enhanced the proportion of central subsidies. The central government subsidized 200,000 Yuan to the township culture station project of each national impoverished county, accounting for 83% of the total investment for single project, and a total of 1.6668 billion Yuan was issued for the construction of 8,342 township culture stations, accounting for 42.3% of the total.

　　【Send books to the countryside】 To support the development of cultural industry in western impoverished areas and help the county libraries and township cultural stations in poor areas to address the problem of book shortage and fund shortage, the Ministry of Culture and Ministry of Finance implemented the project of sending books to the countryside from 2003 to 2008. In the six years, the central government issued 120 million Yuan and donated 10.6 million books to the cultural stations in 592 national poverty-stricken counties and 6,000 towns in the counties, which alleviated the difficulty in obtaining books of the masses in impoverished regions.

　　【Fixed-point poverty alleviation】 According to the unified arrangements of the State Council, the Ministry of Culture has been providing counterpart support for Loufan County and Jingle County of Shanxi Province in fixed-point poverty reduction since 1995. Over the past 15 years, the Ministry of Culture conscientiously implemented the requirements of the Party Central Committee and the State Council on poverty alleviation, attached great importance to poverty reduction and adopted many pro-poor measures. Taking advantage of state organs’ strengths and cultural resources, relying on major cultural projects, it conducted poverty alleviation by talents, concept, education, culture, economic development, etc., invested a great deal of human resources, materials and funds and achieved some results in boosting the development of the two counties.

　　In 2010, the cadres sent by the Ministry of Culture conducted serious supervision on the implementation of entire village advancement projects in Qianchang’an Village of Wangcun Town in Jingle County, Baijiagou Village of Echeng Town, Dongdashu Village of Shenyugou Town, Lingou Village of Duanjiazhai Town and Xiaoquangou Village, Dashengtang Village, Sanyuan Village and Guojiazhuang Village of Loufan County, for which anti-poverty funds were issued in 2008 and 2009. Meanwhile, they successfully implemented the entire village advancement projects in 2010 as schedule and successively allocated 400,000 Yuan for Xidashu Village of Jingle County and Changjiapo Village of Miaowan Town in Loufan County.

　　To implement the spirit of its work conference on poverty alleviation held in 2007, the Ministry of Culture organized 143 excellent teachers and students from Loufan County to participate in the one-week summer camp activity in Beijing in June 2010. The teachers and students successively visited the Forbidden City, the Great Wall, Chairman Mao Memorial Hall and Military Museum and held talks with the teachers and students of Tsinghua University. The summer camp activity broadened their horizons and edified their sentiment.

　　With support of Shanxi Provincial Department of Culture, in June 2010, the Ministry of Culture purchased a mobile stage truck for Jingle County Cultural Activity Center, which made it more convenient for Jingle County’s art troupes to provide various flexible cultural services for grassroots units, widely welcomed by the masses. Meanwhile, the Ministry of Culture actively coordinated the National Museum to donate 80 bookcases, 80 sets of meeting desks and chairs, 8 TV sets and 8 desks to Loufan County Cultural Bureau, which enriched the cultural facilities of senior citizen activity centers, the grass-roots cultural centers and primary schools.