-- Over the last eight years, China's final 98.99 million impoverished rural residents living below the subsistence level declared poverty-free.

-- To ensure that those who have been lifted out of poverty will not be snapped back into impoverishment, China will implement strategies including rural vitalization in an all-around manner during the 14th Five-Year Plan (2021-2025) period, safeguarding the sound development of modern agriculture and increasing income for farmers.

by Xinhua writers Zhu Xiao, Sun Xiaoyu, Yao Yulin

BEIJING, March 14  -- On a drizzly fresh morning, Lu Panfeng, 45, was inspecting and recording the conditions of wheat in the city of Huai'an, east China's Jiangsu Province. Once utterly obscure, he was awarded as a national role model for efforts in poverty alleviation at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing last month.

During the past eight years, as the Party chief of Fengnian village in Huai'an, once a poverty-stricken village, Lu has worked out a busy schedule to lead his villagers out of abject deprivation by developing local agricultural collectives and distinctive industries.

In 2020, the collective incomes of the village notched up 1 million yuan (about 153,000 U.S. dollars), quadrupling that of two years ago.

Over the last eight years, China's final 98.99 million impoverished rural residents living below the subsistence level declared poverty-free. The country then met the poverty eradication target set out in the United Nations' 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development a decade ahead of schedule.

To ensure that those who have been lifted out of poverty will not be snapped back into impoverishment, China will implement strategies including rural vitalization in an all-around manner during the 14th Five-Year Plan (2021-2025) period, safeguarding the sound development of modern agriculture and increasing income for farmers.