Chinese netizens are questioning poverty relief statistics from the government of East China’s Jiangsu Province which announced Tuesday that only six families containing 17 people are still living in poverty in the province after four years of its poverty-eradication campaign.
Over the past four years, 2.54 million people have been lifted out of poverty in Jiangsu, which has a population of 80.5 million, bringing the local poverty relief rate up to 99.99 percent, the China News Service reported Tuesday, citing the provincial government.
The 17 people who are still living in poverty are capable of working and four of them have diseases, an official from the Jiangsu provincial poverty-relief office confirmed with The Beijing News on Wednesday, without releasing further details.
The general standard of poverty-relief in Jiangsu is that a resident earns 6,000 yuan ($576)per year, according to Xue Feng, a senior government official from Dongtai county in northern Jiangsu.
“In our county the mark is 6,500 yuan and it is easy to reach,” Xue told the Global Times on Wednesday.
Per capita disposable income of Dongtai residents was 31,817 yuan in 2018, showing a year-on-year increase of 8.9 percent according to the county government’s website.
Meanwhile, per capita disposable income in Jiangsu province was 38,096 yuan in 2018, with urban dwellers have 47,200 yuan and rural residents 20,845 yuan, the Economic Daily reported.
The newly released data from the Jiangsu government became a trend on Chinese social media platforms with netizens debating the accuracy of the data. Hashtags related to the topic have been viewed more than 90 million times on China’s twitter-like Sina Weibo.
“How could they be so accurate” is a typical comment.
“I don’t believe it. Are there no unemployed people in the province? No beggars?” a Weibo user asked.
Meanwhile, some other netizens criticized such comments saying they show little knowledge of and respect for the country’s decades of poverty-relief work.
“I am a Jiangsu resident. I believe the news and feel bitterly disappointed seeing these comments. There were reports of the sudden deaths of poverty-relief workers due to overwork. Their work is really tiresome and difficult. We should thank them,” a Weibo user named xianggejiahao said.
Some noted such data is convincing in Jiangsu, which has the second largest GDP behind only South China’s Guangdong Province.
Jiangsu’s provincial GDP in the first three quarters in 2019 was 7.22 trillion yuan, an increase of 6.4 percent compared to the same period in 2018.
Photo: Xinhua
