China's poorest people will all have enough food and clothes by 2010, the government promised yesterday.

The 23.65 million poorest people in the country will be fed and clothed thanks to a village-based poverty alleviation campaign, said Liu Jian, director of the Leading Group Office of Poverty Alleviation and Development, which is under the State Council .

Liu said the government will focus the coming years' poverty-reduction efforts on people living in the poorest 148,000 villages.

"We will try hard to develop their capability to work despite poverty alleviation getting even tougher in China," Liu told delegates at the International Conference on Poverty Reduction Strategy in the New Millennium, held in Beijing.

He said at least one labourer from each poor household should get trainning opportunities in the coming five years and the government will support one or two leading enterprises in each of China's 592 poorest counties in a drive to create more jobs.

"We are clear that China faces difficulty and challenges in shaking off absolute poverty," said Liu.

"And one major concern is that there may not be a sufficient supply of grain in some poor regions."

Statistics indicate that the average annual per capita grain consumption for the country's poor and low-income families is 150 kilograms the internationally accepted alarming level.

And a survey conducted by Liu's office found that 36 per cent of households in poor villages are short of grain.

Meanwhile research by the China Grain Economy Research Association also indicates that more than half of China's 592 poorest counties have suffered from grain shortages.

Liu said that by the end of 2005, China had 23.65 million needy people with annual incomes below 683 yuan (US$85.4) only 20 per cent the average rural income.

"The size of the needy population in China is the second largest in the world after India," he added.

But he said China was willing to share its experiences with the rest of the world.

The country's fast economic development the economy grew by 9.4 per cent annually from 1978 to 2005 has helped dramatically reduce the poor population.

And the number of people living in abject poverty fell from 250 million to 23 million in the same period.

Meanwhile the ratio of the very poor in the total rural population has fallen from 30.7 per cent to just 3.1 per cent.

Hou Xin-an, assistant Resident Representative in the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in China said other countries could share China's experiences in coping with human poverty.

"But it is clear that in the new millennium, poverty reduction is turning out to be considerably harder than ever before in China," he said.

And the UN is concerned that regional disparities and urban-rural differences remain major challenges.

The UN has predicted that China will be on track for most the MDG (Millennium Development Goals) targets by 2015, however, the nation may fall short on tackling gender issues, the spread of HIV/AIDS and environmental protection, if sufficient efforts are not taken.

Source: China Daily