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Jun Mai

When President Xi Jinping announced his war against poverty, one of the immediate questions was how to ensure that the money and resources went to the right people.
Revelations by the Communist Party’s top anti-corruption watchdog have shown that this is no easy task.
Among the typical corruption cases the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI) disclosed last week were examples of village officials finding creative ways to take a cut from the poverty-alleviation funds coming from higher offices.
In one case, a village official in Guizhou province, which has one of the country’s largest number of people living under the poverty line, embezzled 150,000 yuan (US$22,600) from his village’s poverty funds to run his own business between 2014 and 2016.

Another village official in Shaanxi province was caught asking for mandatory “donations” from poor families.
All families in the village who had been given approval to receive tourism-related small business start-up funds were asked to make a donation of 5,000 yuan.
The 30 families, all living under the national poverty line, only received their funds after paying the sum requested by the official, the report said.
Xi Jinping’s biggest ally returns to the limelight to support Chinese leader’s war against poverty
Beijing has pledged to lift all of the country’s citizens above the poverty line by 2020.
The goal was set in the 13th five-year plan released in 2015. Xi had said that alleviating poverty was what he spent the most time on.
However, it has emerged that this campaign is one of those most plagued by corruption, especially at the county or village level.
A report by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in January said that among all the complaints filed to the party’s anti-corruption watchdog, more than half of those made at a local level related to poverty alleviation.
Ex-aide to China’s personnel chief sacked for ‘corrupt political morals’
In the first six months of last year alone, the anti-graft watchdog punished more than 5,000 cadres around the country for corruption related to poverty alleviation.
Over the past two years, the CCDI has outlined the typical corruption cases related to the campaign against poverty and many of those examples have been breathtaking.
In a case announced last August, a village official at Anhui province withdrew 100,000 yuan from the bank accounts of 24 villagers in 2014.
The official had obtained their bank books when he applied for pension funds on their behalf. All the money withdrawn came from funding allocated to poverty reduction.
The official had spent all the money, with around a fifth of it going on gambling.

Although corruption related to the drive to cut poverty was a priority for China’s anti-graft campaign it was very hard to uproot, said Zhuang Deshui, deputy director of Peking University’s Clean Government Centre.
“Cadres at lower levels of government are very uneven in terms of ethics,” Zhuang said. “Their supervisors at higher offices are sometimes reluctant to look into the loopholes, as they always welcome poverty-related funds that could lighten their financial burden, even though there is trickery in lower-level offices.”


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A poor family in Sichuan province have their evening meal. The Chinese government aims to lift all people above the poverty line by 2020. Photo: Imaginechina

A resident smiles in her house in Shajiawan Village, close to where Premier Wen Jiabao visited during the Chinese New Year holidays to promote rural development, in Anhui province February 5, 2011. Premier Wen came to support his pledge to narrow the rich-poor gap and channel more wealth to China's 720 million villagers and rural migrant workers, a population more than double the size of the United States. To match special report CHINA-LABOUR/RURAL REUTERS/Chris Buckley/Files (CHINA - Tags: SOCIETY POLITICS)

(MANDATORY CREDIT: Hu Chao/Xinhua) A teenager helps to cook for the family at home. Most of the children in Mukeji village start to do housework at very young age. Mukeji village is located in the deep Gaoligong Mountains, in the western Yunnan highlands, in Nujiang prefecture of southwest China's Yunnan province. 1800 meters above sea level, the village has 130 people living, with about 20 students in school age. Half of the farming land in Nujiang prefecture is located on the mountain slopes, and so are most of the houses. 21 of the 29 townships, in the prefecture are listed as poverty, with 202000 people living in poverty. In 2014, the annual net income per capita of the local farmers in Nujiang prefecture was merely 4297 yuan, which was only one third of Chinese people's average income.But the net income per capita in Mukeji village was even less, 2300 yuan. Mukeji village is an epitome of the poverty problem Nujiang prefecture faces. The only connection between the village and the

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Anti-graft watchdog highlights numerous examples where low-level functionaries have been siphoning off funds meant to help the poor


Poverty in China

Xi Jinping’s poverty alleviation campaign

Corrupt officials holding back China’s drive to eliminate poverty

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Anti-graft watchdog highlights numerous examples where low-level functionaries have been siphoning off funds meant to help the poor

Anti-graft watchdog highlights numerous examples where low-level functionaries have been siphoning off funds meant to help the poor