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Chinese Vice-Premier Hui Liangyu said China would move to eliminate remaining poverty in rural areas as soon as possible before 2010.

In a speech to a just-concluded meeting of the poverty reduction group under the State Council, or the Chinese government, the vice-premier said China must move with greater determination and efforts to realize the poverty reduction target. The speech was made available to Xinhua News Agency on June 3.

The pledge came a week after the May 26-27 Global Conference on Scaling Up Poverty Reduction in Shanghai, which was initiated by the World Bank.

The vice-premier said China will concentrate its efforts on improving the living and production conditions and ecological environment in poor areas, giving priority to the projects that can boost farmland production capacity and grain output.

China will offer vocational training services to farmers in poor areas to help them seek jobs in non-agricultural sectors or other profitable business, while mobilizing the whole community to help poor areas, said the vice-premier.

Statistics show that in 1978, China had 250 million extremely poor people in the countryside who were inadequately fed and clothed, accounting for 30.7 percent of its total rural population.

The number shrank dramatically to 29 million by the end of 2003,who mostly live in far and remote mountainous areas with harsh living and farming conditions, where people have suffered poverty for generations due to lack of water and fertile land.

China's rural reform initiated in 1978 introduced household contract land responsibility system, which granted farmers with the land use right and the right to dispose surplus produce, and greatly boosted farmers' production enthusiasm to produce more and hence earn more.

From 1978 to 1985 alone, Chinese farmers' income increased by 1.69 times.

Source: Xinhua