Lei Xiangping

    lagon235@163.com

    THE status quo of poverty alleviation in China remains critical, despite the fact that nearly 600 million people have been lifted out of poverty. On Oct. 12, Hong Tianyun, deputy director of the State Council Leading Group Office of Poverty Alleviation and Development, said in a news briefing that China still has a poor population of over 70 million, even though the deadline to lift all Chinese out of poverty is on the horizon.

    Although the Central Government has spent billions of yuan and issued many favorable policies to fight poverty in the past three decades, the situation of the anti-poverty initiative in some areas remains stagnant or has even backpedaled.

    One important reason the Central Government’s anti-poverty endeavors have failed is corruption and dereliction of duty in the course of implementing these policies at the grass-roots level.

    The National Audit Office on Oct. 8 disclosed an inspection report regarding violations of fiscal discipline that said 3,119 people from Mashan County of the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, categorized by local authorities as a poor population to receive aid, actually live a well-off life.

    Among them, 343 people are public servants, 2,454 people possess 2,645 private cars, 43 have their own commercial housing properties and 439 have their own business or companies. It is really shocking to see that national poverty-reduction resources allocated by the central and provincial governments to improve poor people’s lives have been misused.

    In Mashan, a poor mountainous region, urban and rural people’s yearly disposable income in 2012 was only 17,683 yuan (US$2,783) and 4,865 yuan, respectively, but what is really disappointing is that poor people can’t access poverty-reduction resources while some rich residents who pretend to be poor can.

    The Mashan case is not an isolated one, and there have been many reports that people driving BMW cars yet live in government-subsidized houses and people owning LV bags receive low-income allowances. No one in Mashan who met the poverty standard could be registered as a poor person without the help of local officials. This is the very reason why corruption arises alongside attempts to fight poverty.

    As local governments in China control the distribution of poverty-reduction resources, whether people can benefit from the allocation of resources depends on their relationship with officials. After central and provincial governments approve poverty-reduction funds and send the money to local government, the township governments usually have to depend on village heads to decide who is poor and who is not.

    In addition to corruption, the other problem is dereliction of duty. A recent Xinhua report said that nearly 100 million yuan in poverty-reduction funds, which should have been used to develop anti-poverty projects, was instead sitting idle in banks. As a result, many infrastructure projects in Mashan were delayed.

    Some local governments have not performed their responsibilities well. They might be good at preparing documents on how to get people out of poverty when applying for funds, but they are lazy when it comes to using the funds to benefit the poor. Worse still, some local governments even fake their achievements in poverty reduction or exaggerate the local situation in order to get more money.

    Central and provincial governments used to distribute funds to local governments but hardly cared about how the funds were used. Now, local governments are required to know who are poor, why they are poor and how to help them out before taking targeted action. This could help curb corruption and dereliction of duty in poverty alleviation if local officials are put under greater scrutiny.

    In doing so, central and provincial governments should strictly stipulate the use of poverty-reduction resources and bring officials who violate the rules to justice.

    Making sure poverty-reduction resources are used for the right persons is not only a matter of social equity but also a matter of government credibility. Governments of all levels must act quickly to right the wrongs.

    (The author is a News Desk editor with China Radio International.)