From xinhua via China Daily:
China’s poverty line of 680 yuan (US$85) per capita net income a year is too low for subsistence and fails to spread the benefits of the country’s economic boom, a poverty relief official has said.
China’s economy surged by 10.9 percent in the first half of 2006, the fastest rise in a decade. But the poverty line failed to reflect the average standard of living, said Wu Zhong, an official in charge of international cooperation and poverty reduction with the State Council Leading Group Office of Poverty Alleviation and Development.
At the end of last year, China had 23.65 million people living below the poverty line. But China’s poor actually totaled 120 million to 130 million, using the internationally-accepted one US dollar per day guideline, said Wu.[Full Text]
