About 738,000 people in southwest China's Yunnan Province escaped poverty in 2001, an official of the provincial government said at a working conference on poverty relief.
He noted that the province spent 2.75 billion yuan (about US$325 million) last year on poverty relief, which covered a series of projects.
Statistics show that the average annual net income of farmers in the 73 poverty-stricken Yunnan counties reached 1,150 yuan (about US$138.6) in 2001, an increase of 4 percent compared with the previous year.
Yunnan is among China's provinces which possess the largest poverty-stricken population. The province has realized its goal of helping more people escape poverty.
(Xinhua News Agency March 4, 2002)
