China has achieved remarkably results in poverty alleviation but it is still a long way from eradicating poverty and building all-round prosperity, a State Council official told journalists in Beijing on September 27.

Fan Xiaojian addressed at the press?briefing.

Fan Xiaojian, director of the State Council Leading Group on Poverty Alleviation and Development, said that in 30 years of reform and opening up China had cut the number of people living in absolute poverty from 250 million in 1978 to 14.79 million in 2007; in other words from 30 percent to 1.6 percent of the population. People's quality of life has improved dramatically.

But Fan reiterated Premier Wen Jiabao's recent remark to the UN General Assembly that China, while proud of its achievements, is clear-headed about the outstanding challenges.

There is still widespread poverty in China, and the world financial crisis of 2009 created the risk of people falling back into poverty, Fan said. People in short-term poverty now make up two thirds of those classified as poor. The new national poverty standard identifies nearly 36 million poor people, accounting for 3.8 percent of the rural population. But there would be even more if China adopted international methods of counting.

Furthermore, the income gap in rural areas is widening, and comparative poverty is becoming ever more obvious. The number of absolutely impoverished people decreased by 4.1 million in 2009. But the number defined as comparatively poor increased by 5.25 million.

Solving the problem of basic food and clothing in rural China was just the first step. Narrowing the income gap and securing the goal of common prosperity will be a much longer process, Fan said.