“Estimate the belongings according to the house; estimate the potential power according to the industry; estimate the income according to the labor; and estimate the expenditure according to the medicare and education.” In recent 15 days, more than 5,000 CPC officials of county and town level in Changyang Tujia Minority Autonomous County form different working groups. Regardless of the extremely hot weather, they sleep in farmers’ houses and pay meals by themselves. They investigate the poverty conditions in more than 100,000 households in the county. They checked every house, every person and collected more than 6,000,000 pieces of accurate information about farmers.

Changyang County, with a population of 410,000, is a combination of “the old, the young, the mountains and the poor condition”. It is one of the key counties of poverty alleviation and development and the uphill anti-poverty county with national recognition. By 2014, the number of households on the list of Poverty Alleviation Office under the State Council is 29,674, involving 94,783 people. Among them there are 39 administrative villages of high poverty incidence and 20 poverty villages of county level.

Zhao Jixiong, CPC Secretary of Changyang County, said that poverty alleviation requires accurate recognition and the government officials should check every household and even every person through the way of “Four Observations and Four Calculations”. As a result, they have built a more accurate “poverty condition” database through re-check, re-investigation and re-registration.

Puling Village in Duzhenwan town is the pilot village of accurate poverty alleviation of the county. The transportation is very inconvenient. In July, Zhao Jixiong led a working group into the village twice, interviewing and investigating 668 farmer households. Through the way of “analyzing a typical case”, they provided a sample of poverty alleviation for 154 farmer households of the county. At present, centered on the poverty alleviation line of four “industries of three thousand acres”(medicinal herbs, tea, walnut and raising sheep on grasslands), the village is struggling to get rid of poverty.

During the investigation, the government has always been insisting on the “Mass Line” to make sure that the recognition of poverty household can be compared, talked about and shown out among the villagers according to the working method of “One look; two calculations; three meetings and four assesses”. After “Four Observations and Four Calculations”, the working group would hold house meeting, meeting of CPC members and the people’s meeting. Then the people, the CPC members, village officials and representative villagers would assess the result and check the truth.  

In order to make sure the accurate recognition of the objects of poverty alleviation, Changyang government took the measure of “National survey, key verification” to make sure “no household is left out and no person is left out”. At the same time, the government also made the necessary tips of “seven included” and “nine not included”.

According to the Poverty Alleviation Office of Changyang County, the county has already done the basic work of poverty check and recognition, becoming the first one among all the counties and cities in Yichang. At present, Changyang government is making efforts to carry the work of comparison, check and analysis of “Big Database” and accelerates the speed of poverty alleviation plan of “supporting some special industry; promoting some people’s migration and resettlement; guaranteeing some people’s livelihood through policy; caring about and supporting the sick and helping some people with education.”  (Reporter: Gao Wei; correspondent: Mu Gong and Zhou Rui)