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December 6, 2018

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Region is on way to eliminating poverty

Forty years after China started its reform program, more than 18 million people living in the rural areas of Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region have been lifted out of poverty.

The southern autonomous region, which marks its 60th anniversary this December, reported a rural population of 2.67 million living in poverty at the end of 2017, down from 21 million in 1978.

“The rural poverty rate fell from 70 percent to 5.7 percent in this period,” said Huang Weijing, secretary-general of Guangxi Regional Committee of the Communist Party of China.

Improving infrastructure has been the highlight of Guangxi’s anti-poverty campaign. Huang said the region now operates 1,771km of high-speed railway while 91 percent of the counties have access to expressways.

The autonomous region, inhabited by China’s most populous ethnic minority Zhuang and many other minority groups, was established in 1958. It has been a major front in China’s ongoing battle against poverty.

Poverty reduction has been high on the agenda of the Chinese government, which aims to eradicate absolute poverty by 2020. The country’s poverty line stands at 2,300 yuan (US$335) in annual income.

The official said the region’s GDP reached 2 trillion yuan in 2017, almost tenfold that of 1958 upon its founding.

It has been boosted by prospering industries including food processing, machinery as well as electronic information.




 

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