韩青 | Speech at the National Conference to Review the Fight Against Poverty and Commend Outstanding Individuals and Groups

嘉宾简介:

韩青,国网国际发展有限公司青年代表。

英文文本:

We have won international acclaim for our achievements in the fight against poverty. These achievements would not have been possible without the strong leadership of the CPC, the Chinese people's spirit of self-reliance and hard work, the solid material foundations laid down since the founding of the PRC and particularly since the launch of reform and opening up, the perseverance and dedication of one official after another, and the concerted efforts of all the Party members and all the Chinese people.

Based on our national conditions and our understanding of the structures underlying poverty alleviation, we have adopted a series of distinctive policies and measures, established a whole set of effective policies, working mechanisms and systems, pioneered a unique Chinese path to poverty reduction, and formed a Chinese theory on fighting poverty.

– We have upheld the leadership of the CPC to provide solid political and organizational guarantees for the fight against poverty.

We have upheld the centralized, unified leadership of the Central Committee over the fight against poverty, and planned and promoted related initiatives as part of the Five-sphere Integrated Plan and the Four-pronged Comprehensive Strategy. We have strengthened the working mechanism under which the central leadership makes overall plans, provincial authorities assume overall responsibility, and city and county authorities take charge of implementation. We have worked to ensure that secretaries of Party committees at the provincial, city, county, township, and village levels tackled poverty alleviation as a major priority, and that all Party members were mobilized in the fight.

We have put in place a system whereby top leaders of the Party and government bodies take full responsibility for the fight against poverty, with the leaders of 22 provincial-level administrative units in the central and western regions signing pledges to the central authorities that they would achieve their objectives. Furthermore, we arranged that Party and government chiefs of impoverished counties would not be moved to new posts while poverty eradication efforts were ongoing in their areas.

We have worked to build up village organizations led by the Party organization at the same level, and to strengthen village-level Party organizations so that they can be more effective in leading the people out of poverty. We have sent our best teams to the main battlefields of the fight against poverty, assigning 255,000 work teams and more than 3 million first secretaries and officials to villages nationwide, where they worked on the front lines alongside nearly 2 million town and township officials and millions of village officials. The bright red flag of the CPC has always flown high on the main battlefields of the fight against poverty.

The CPC has proved that it has unparalleled capacity to lead, organize and implement, and that it is the most reliable force for uniting the people and guiding them to overcome difficulties and forge ahead. As long as we are steadfast in our commitment to upholding the leadership of the Party, we will be able to overcome any difficulties or obstacles on the road ahead and fulfill the people's aspirations for a better life.

– We have adhered to the people-centered development philosophy, and followed the path of common prosperity without deviation.

To quote an ancient Chinese historian, “The key to running a country is to first enrich the people.”4 We have always stood on the side of the people, and consistently emphasized that eradicating poverty, improving the people's lives, and achieving common prosperity are essential requirements of socialism. They are important manifestations of the CPC's commitment to its fundamental purpose of serving the people wholeheartedly, and major responsibilities of the Party and the government.

We have made public satisfaction an important measure for the effectiveness of poverty eradication initiatives, and focused our efforts on addressing the basic needs of the poor. We have given full play to the guiding role of government investment, cutting back on a number of other major projects to ensure funding for poverty eradication. Over the past eight years, central, provincial, city and county governments have earmarked a total of almost RMB1.6 trillion for poverty alleviation, of which RMB660.1 billion came from the central government.

The critical battle against poverty was launched in 2012. The following are some of the funds that have been directed to poverty alleviation:

•more than RMB440 billion from land transfer between and within provinces to ensure cropland acreage and proper land use for construction;

•more than RMB710 billion in microloans and RMB668.8 billion in re-lending to help the poor;

•RMB9.2 trillion in l...