President Xi Jinping meets with local villagers at Songjiagou New Village, a centralized resettlement site under the approach of alleviating poverty through relocation, in Kelan county of Xinzhou city, North China's Shanxi province, June 21, 2017. Xi had a three-day inspection tour in Shanxi from Wednesday. [Photo/Xinhua]

AT A RECENT MEETING of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress, China's top legislature, several members said poverty alleviation efforts must be made in such a way that the poor become capable of helping themselves instead of relying on financial aid. Beijing News comments:

Cheng Guangguo, a member of the NPC Standing Committee, said he met with eight poor families whose incomes were above the national poverty alleviation standard last year. But the major part of their incomes came from State aid. In fact, for one of the families, State aid accounted for 82 percent of its total income.

These cases show the national poverty alleviation policy has been implemented, but since some poor families rely heavily on State aid, they are unable to become even relatively self-sufficient.

That in turn leads to a dilemma: When a poor family's income reaches a certain level, it is removed from the financial aid list, but because of its inability to earn enough money on its own to lead a decent life, it falls back into poverty. This cycle has to be broken to help poor people to permanently get rid of their poverty.

So instead of simply providing financial aid for the poor families, local governments should invest more in sustainable programs, which will allow those poor families to earn money through their own efforts.

From 2013 to last year, the number of poor people in rural areas dropped by more than half, from 98.99 million to 43.35 million. But much more needs to be done.