Goodbye, Poverty
Diversified Poverty Relief
Farmers have benefited from tax abatement policies and wide-ranging government subsidies. From 2000 to 2005, agricultural tax and taxes on animal husbandry, specialty products and slaughtering were abolished, relieving a tax burden equivalent to RMB 133.5 billion per year on rural residents. Farmers have enjoyed direct subsidies based on grain acreage, and have been compensated for the rising prices of chemical fertilizers, pesticides, diesel and other inputs.
Farmers have been granted subsidies to encourage them to adopt higher-yielding crop varieties and the latest technology in farming machinery. Over the decade from 2001 to 2011, such subsidies amounted to RMB 143.9 billion.
The government has increased investment in rural infrastructure and public services by a substantial amount. Helping emerging industries start producing competitively priced goods has further increased farmers’ incomes.
Against a background of subsidies and industry assistance, environmental protection has been consistently emphasized. The environment is a system: a delicate balance between population, resources and sustainable ecological rejuvenation. Breaking or over-exploiting any one step in the cycle can be disastrous for the entire ecosystem.
In terms of sheer numbers, from 2001 through 2010 126,000 villages have benefited from poverty relief-oriented subsidies and other policies. Since 2010, another 30,000 impoverished villages have come under assistance. Assistance measures have broadened to include technology transfer, vocational training, direct industry support and financial assistance.
Since 2009, increasing numbers of scientists have been sent to impoverished regions to teach, demonstrate and promote more efficient farming techniques.
From 2000 a number of established brands have emerged from countryside locales, greatly contributing to local development. Many of these have become pillar industries that provide employment in villages outside of the farmers’ fields. Farmers’ incomes have indirectly benefited.
Starting in 2004, many kinds of training programs have been carried out in impoverished areas in order to break the intergenerational transmission of poverty. Programs include vocational training, small business management and technical skill upgrading, and all are subsidized to the tune of RMB 600 to RMB 1,500 per person.
The government has also been providing financial incentives for children from poorer families to attend higher or secondary vocational training programs after graduating from high school. Subsidies for such programs amount to RMB 1,500 per person per year.
Other priorities include helping farmers specialize, offering them financial and technical support, diversifying villages’ production bases, assisting leading industries, developing higher value-added processing industries and promoting cooperation between farmers in order to expand their markets.
Since 2001, the Poverty Relief Office of the State Council, along with the Ministry of Finance, the People’s Bank of China and the China Banking Regulatory Commission have provided farmers with preferential interest rates for on-the-spot loans, micro-credit and project-targeted loans.
From 2002 to 2011, the central budget earmarked interest subsidies of RMB 5.445 billion and loans of RMB 230 billion for poverty relief. From 2006 to 2011, the government issued RMB 150,000 for each of the 16,300 impoverished villages in 1,141 counties as aid for expanding production.
Anlong County in Guizhou Province is one region that had previously suffered endemic poverty. But thanks to subsidies and other poverty relief programs, Anlong residents can look forward to a brighter future. Six hundred rural households in 12 townships have benefited from an innovation fund, for instance. Initially, RMB 3 million was raised as principal for a loan of RMB 30 million – a 1/10 debt ratio, the likes of which are only available under the government’s poverty relief program. A government-backed preferential interest rate has also saved villagers RMB 400,000 in interest payments. The loan has been used in Anlong County to boost grassland ecological animal husbandry and introduce mechanized vegetable crop harvesting. Only with such a targeted capital injection could Anlong break the cycle of poverty.
