"We villagers now can drink clean tap water as urban residents do," said Zhao Caihong, with a broad smile on her face. "We used to fetch water from rivers, which were often contaminated with the livestock's excrement and urine." Zhao is also happy and contented that her family moved last year from a old shanty into a big new one, benefiting from a government-funded house renovation project.

Zhao and some 250 other families live in a outlying mountain village called Shangping, in Xihaigu region, the poorest part of northwest China's underdeveloped Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region.

One year ago, much like so many other poverty-stricken villages in the country, it still suffered from low family incomes, poor transportation conditions and a shortage of clean drinking water,

However, things have begun changing as the government focuses more on vast rural areas.

Wang Dianzhong, head of the village committee, said that last year alone the government poured 1.2 million yuan (US$150.000) to improve its infrastructure and to train and encourage villagers to find jobs in cities.

The village used part of the funds to built a new sand road, which winds through surrounding mountains to the outside world. Families having televisions can watch eight channels of programs since microwave antenna were installed at their homes.

Shangping, like other outlying, poor villages nationwide, is beginning to share the outcome of China's galloping growth as China focuses more on rural areas by adopting a "new socialist countryside" strategy.

Chinese government leaders depict a new socialist countryside as having higher productivity, improved livelihood, higher-degree civilization with greater socialist ethics, tidy appearance and democratic management in the 11th Five-Year?Guidelines (2006-2010) period, showing the resolve of the Chinese top leadership to spread the fruits of reform to its rural areas, especially poor places like Shangping.

The central government allocated 13 billion yuan (US$ 1.6 billion) last year to its poverty reduction program, 13 times that in 1980 and 37.2 percent of which was poured into the autonomous regions of Inner Mongolia, Xinjiang, Ningxia, Guangxi and Tibet, and provinces with large ethnic populations, such as Guizhou, Yunnan and Qinghai.

After more than 25 years of economic reform, the poverty rate in rural areas has dropped to less than 3 percent. Nevertheless, China still has a huge number of needy people due to its big population.

China also has 26.1 million people who live in dire need and who it is believed will be "the hardest nut to crack" during the poverty reduction program.

The Chinese government has turned more attention on its rural poor by reducing various taxes and promoting free compulsory education.

The agricultural tax, which has had a history of 2600 years, was rescinded completely this year and an increasing number of children in rural areas gained access to free compulsory education. Meanwhile, the country began to lower the price of medical services by instituting a rural cooperative medical service system.

Wang Guoliang, deputy director of the Office of Poverty Relief under the State Council, or the central government, said poverty alleviation through development must go hand in hand with building a new harmonious and civilized countryside.

In the future, China would continue to relieve poverty in the model of "develop the whole village together", which means taking one poor village as a unit and tackling the problems one by one, and ensuring that the allocated money is really spent on the needy, he said.

Under this model, the net income of peasant farmers in Xihaigu region has registered an average yearly growth rate of 14.17 percent during the past five years, with the income rising from 987.4 yuan (US$122.7) to 1,687 yuan (US$210).

The portion of the population living in abject poverty has been slashed from 527,000 in 2000 to 152,000 in 2004.

"We pledge to invest more on easing poverty in Xihaigu region," said Ma Qizhi, chairman of the Ningxia Hui autonomous regional government.

(Xinhua News Agency March 7, 2006)