What is the Population below the Poverty Line in China?

What is really the number of population below the poverty line in China? The answer depends on the definition. According to the 1990 survey by the World Bank, the poverty population in China exceeds 100 millions. The official Chinese Government report in 1997 puts the number at 58 millions for people suffering from hunger and sheltering problems. Moreover, 80% of them are located in the northwest and southwest region.

This poverty population has an annual per capita income less than RMB 580. In particular, 10 millions of them concentrate in regions with extremely poor natural resources and have per capita income less than RMB 300 annually. These impoverished regions are way behind in education, health care, and cultural activities. This in turn prolongs the economic depression.

Studies have shown that in order to break away from poverty and ignorance, people must think out of the mode of passivity and dependence. This means scrapping change resistance and narrow mindedness, nurturing market-oriented economy, paying attention to the mutual dependence between human resource development and economic development. Besides appropriate governmental policies, the change process also requires long term effort in popularizing and improving education for the impoverished people.