Xi Jinping’s poverty alleviation conception: To alleviate poverty, we must develop rural education first so as to prevent the poor from passing poverty down to their following generations. Xi noted at the 11^th meeting of the Central Leading Group for Comprehensively Deepening Reforms that it was of vital importance to develop rural education so that each child could have access to a fair and quality education and that poverty must be prevented from passing down to next generations. “It takes practical measures and great efforts to contain poverty, rather than lip service,” he said.

Source: cpc.people.com.cnApr2, 2015

The central government allocated 43.3 billion yuan for poverty alleviation in 2014. The government put forward many reform measures for the allocation, spending and regulation of the funds. Of the 43.3 billion yuan in total, 42.4 billion were allocated to subsidize local governments, both up by 10% over the previous year. The increased part of fund mainly went to contiguous destitute areas. Meanwhile, local governments also raised the amount of poverty alleviation funds, offering a mechanism to guarantee the battle against poverty.

Source: paper.people.com.cn Apr 2, 2015

Key universities are to enroll 50,000 students pre-assigned to specific posts/areas from poor rural areas. The announcement released by the Ministry of Education recently pointed out that the special program for enrolling pre-assigned students from rural poor areas will continue to be implemented this year. It is planned to enroll 50,000 students from 832 poor counties in 10 provinces such as  Henan and Gansu, where key university enrollment rates are relatively low. In addition, the Ministry of Education will continue to carry out the independent enrollment program for outstanding rural students with an amount of no fewer than 2% of the total undergraduate enrollment, mainly targeting at students from remote, autonomous regions and other poor counties and areas below the county level.

Source: gmw.cn Apr 8, 2015

Local Poverty Alleviation News:

In 2014, 24,200 people in Yinjiang Tujia and Miao Autonomous County of Guizhou Provincewere lifted out of poverty, with the poverty incidence rate decreased by 5.6 percentage points.Disposable income per capita across the county reached 6,047 yuan, an increase of 14.4% over the same period previous year. In 2014, driven by the pursuit of “a well-off livelihood at the same pace”, the Yinjiang County government obtained 66.95 million yuan of various poverty alleviation funds in order to support and guide people to start off profitable industries.

Source: xinhuanet.com Apr 7, 2015

The investment for per capita basic public health service fund in Tibet is 30% higher than the national average.In 2014, per capita input for basic public health service in Tibet reached 45 yuan, 10 yuan higher than the national average. A total of 140 million yuan was invested in the county-level women and children healthcare institutions and pediatric projects. There are currently 35 poor counties with projects targeted for children’s nutrition improvements, benefiting 15,000 children.

Source: xinhuanet.com Apr 1, 2015

The health conditions of women and children have been remarkably improved in urban and rural areas in Guizhou Province. In 2014, the women and children health program was fully implemented in Guizhou: a total of 347,000 rural pregnant and parturient women were given 139 million yuan as subsidies for their childbirth in hospitals; the children nutrition improvement program was carried out in impoverished regions and nutrition packs were offered to 830,000 person-times with an effective utility rate of 83.1%; 470,000 rural women were screened for cervical cancer and 38,000 for breast cancer, and those who were infected got treatments for free; 465,000 pregnant and parturient women were offered tests and comprehensive treatment for HIV/AIDS, syphilis and hepatitis B.

Source: chinanews.comApr 2, 2015

Public Poverty Alleviation and Charity News:

China Foundation for Poverty Alleviation raised 3.519 billion yuan of money and supplies for poverty alleviation in 2014.A total of 2.571 billion yuan was invested to help a total of 2,952,891 poor people and residents of disaster-stricken areas from 209 universities, 511 counties and 31 provinces in China as well as other regions such as Sudan, Myanmar, Cambodia.

Source: chinanews.comApr 2, 2015

The State owned enterprises (SOEs) will provide more support for poverty alleviation in old revolutionary bases. In 2015, SOEs will support old revolutionary bases by first collecting details about infrastructure shortage in terms of transportation, water and electricity in those bases and listing relevant key projects into the “13^thFive Year Plan” of the targeted poor counties and SOEs so as to push forward poverty alleviation supported by SOEs.

Source: gmw.cn Apr 2, 2015

Organizer: Beijing Normal University China Poverty Reduction Research Center