Anti-poverty drive is winning, but there's a long way to go

Seventy-year-old Zhang Shengrong has finally moved out of the cave that was the family home for generations.

His new brick home in Shaanxi's Dengjiapo village, built with the help of a government subsidy and three sons working in the provincial capital, is testament to Beijing's drive to develop the mainland's impoverished west.

But it also shows how far that drive has to go. Zhang's life on the southern edge of the northwestern plateau - the cradle of Chinese civilisation - bears little resemblance to that enjoyed in the mainland's crowded and booming cities.

His new one-storey home has two rooms and an electricity supply, but little else. There's no running water, no toilet and he cooks his food by burning peat.

And Zhang still lives in absolute poverty, earning about 1,000 yuan (HK$1,150) a year from the wheat he harvests with his daughter-in-law. His three sons have sent money back from Xian , but most of that was spent on the house.

Despite all the hardship, Liu Zhenwu , the village's party chief, says residents' lives have improved significantly in the decade since former president Jiang Zemin launched the 'go west' campaign, designed to narrow the wealth gap between the country's vast, neglected interior and its more prosperous coastal regions.