More than 23 million rural people in China don't have enough food to eat or clothes to wear.

Adding in the more than 40 million low-income rural residents whose annual per capita earnings are between 683 yuan (US$84), the nation's poverty line, and 944 yuan (US$116), the nation's low-income line, some 64 million residents need help from the country's poverty alleviation campaign.

In the five years since the State Council's poverty alleviation and development programme was launched, more than 5 million rural residents have been lifted from a life of destitution. More than 20 million rural residents have seen their annual incomes rise above the low-income line.

For a country with such a large population and unbalanced economic and social development, the poverty alleviation is a long-term battle.

Compared with the situation in the 1980s and 1990s, when more than 65 million rose out of poverty each year, the current task may not appear so daunting.

However, in the past five years rural residents lifted out of poverty numbered only about 1.1 million each year. In 2003, this population group actually increased by 800,000. Approximately 14.6 million shook off poverty, but 15.4 million others were driven back to near destitution by harsh natural conditions or natural disasters.

This suggests that the remaining group is in such dire straits that conventional poverty-alleviation methods hardly apply.

In one solution, around 1.5 million residents have been moved from areas where the natural conditions are too harsh to even eek out the most basic hand-to-mouth existence.

This is not enough. We need to establish a social security system that will provide for those who cannot work because of old age or physical disability.

We need to pay attention to environmental protection in rural areas, as soil or water contamination can easily push those who have shaken off poverty back towards destitution.

The current target date for total desperate poverty eradication is 2010, just four years from now.

Even if that goal is achieved, hard work remains helping these people continue to improve their standard of living.

The central government's focus on the construction of a new socialist countryside sends the message that efforts must be made to allow rural residents to share in the fruits of the nation's development.

It is overly optimistic to believe that the rural revival will bring prosperity to all residents.

When the poverty line is shifted up to 1000 yuan (US$120) in the near future, it is likely that many will be under it once more.

Compared with the international poverty line, one US dollar a day, we still have a long way to go in our poverty alleviation efforts.

(China Daily March 30, 2006)