The Yunnan provincial poverty alleviation video conference was held in Kunming on August 22. During the conference the attendees studied the talk by provincial party secretary Chen Hao on his special investigation on poverty alleviation, and prepared the next stage of the work to fight poverty in the province. Most importantly, a new policy for improving the usage of poverty alleviation funds was clarified. The point of the policy is to no longer directly give money or material assistance to the poor or provide unconditional welfare payments. From now on, poor families which have the capacity to work will be provided welfare payments according to the amount of labour they have expended. Funds will be allocated to industrial investment, labor remuneration and subsidies for public welfare jobs, in order to encourage the poor to no longer think that they should passively wait to be lifted out of poverty, and instead focus on escaping poverty through their own efforts.
It was established during the conference that information collection from various areas throughout Yunnan should be continually improved to ensure its authenticity and accuracy, avoiding over-generalizations and rigid uniformity. Another concept that was stressed was the one of “dynamic management”. According to what was explained, dynamic management should aim to not only solve the problems of the poor people targeted, but also achieve familiarity with six aspects: the poverty stricken population, the causes of poverty, the support measures, the responsibility and accountability, the input-output targets and the exit strategy. Dynamic management should start from the village level, and then be reported upwards through the administrative levels, in order to make full use of its results.
