Despite that, and their lack of formal education – Jizhi quit school several years ago and his parents can barely read – until recently they managed to survive on the money the teenager and his father, Jizhi Yousha, earned as casual labourers.

But as it became harder to make ends meet, in December, the family decided that the only way to survive was for not only the two men, but also wife and mother, Naibao Meramu, to take to the road.

So, after leaving three younger children – two boys in primary school and a girl in kindergarten – with an aunt, the trio set off in search of work, though with only basic skills and a limited education to offer, they knew their options would be limited.

“Farming and construction work is all we can do,” Jizhi Gari said.

For people like the Jizhi family, finding steady jobs is easier said than done.

The family’s first stop was in south China’s Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region, where they worked from dawn till dusk as hod carriers on a building site for two months.

When the restrictions were lifted, they moved on again, this time to Fujian province in the southeast of the country, where they found work as farmhands digging up carrots, earning about 400 yuan (US$56) a day between them.

Province’s claim it has just 17 poor people sparks debate about official data

While that was good money for a poor family from Sichuan, as with most agricultural jobs, the work was only temporary.

“When the harvest season ended in April, we had to move on, so here we are in Lanzhou,” Jizhi Gari said, referring to the capital of Gansu province in the northwest of the country.

Since arriving in the city, he and his parents have been working as cabbage pickers on local farms. The teenager said they each earned about 80 yuan a day when there was work, but often there was not.

The family’s peripatetic lifestyle is a result of them relying on tips from people back home.

“Our fellow villagers share news when there is a suitable job for us to do, so we go wherever there is one,” Jizhi Gari said.

“We’d like to work longer hours, but there’s not much work to do because of the coronavirus.”

He said that by the end of the year – when they planned to return home – the family expected to have saved more than 10,000 yuan (US$1,400).

“But that will soon go once we get home,” he said. “You know, all the travel expenses, the daily necessities for my sister and brothers.”

Li Guoxiang, from the Rural Development Institute of the Chinese Academy of the Social Sciences, said that as the government focused its resources on helping poverty-stricken households, families like the Jizhis who lived on the edge were often overlooked.

“Such people are very vulnerable, they can fall into poverty when there is an epidemic, a natural disaster, or just if a family member falls ill,” he said.

“There is great risk of more people falling back into poverty when the economy is in decline, as was evident by what happened in the countryside in the first quarter.”

According to the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), the actual income of residents in rural areas fell by 4.7 per cent in the first three months of the year compared with the same period of 2019.

According to the NBS, at the end of last year China’s rural poor population stood at 5.5 million and the country had about 290 million migrant workers.

The World Bank defines the extreme poor as those living on less than US$1.90 a day, though it also has higher lines for people in middle-income countries.

In 2019, China set its poverty line at 3,218 yuan (US$450) a year but the government said it plans to raise that to 4,000 yuan this year.

The spike was caused by restrictions on people’s movements in January and February – many migrant workers were unable to return to their jobs after travelling home for the Lunar New Year – and widespread job losses as companies buckled under the economic pressure caused by the health crisis, he told a press conference last week.

By the end of February, just 40 per cent of migrant workers from rural areas had returned to their jobs in the city, and although that figure had risen to 95 per cent by the end of April, “they basically earned nothing in January and February and their losses were irreparable”, Liu said.

The government was now working with employers and increasing investment in an effort to offset the impact of the health crisis, he said.

Premier Li said in his work report that the government had set a target to create more than 9 million urban jobs this year.