FORTY years after China started its reform and opening up, more than 18 million rural residents have been lifted out of poverty in Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region.

The autonomous region, which will mark 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, according to the latest government data.

“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 (CPC).

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

The autonomous region, heavily inhabited by China’s most populous ethnic minority, Zhuang, and many other minority groups, was established in 1958.  (Xinhua)