Earlier, CGTN's commentator Robert Lawrence Kuhn sat down with Liu Yongfu, the Minister of the State Council Leading Group Office for Poverty Alleviation and Development. He talked about how China is going about this important work.

LIU YONGFU MINISTER OF STATE COUNCIL LEADING GROUP OFFICE OF POVERTY ALLEVIATION AND DEVELOPMENT "China uses central planning, governmental organization, and city implementation. The central government provides the overall design, including financial support. In total we have 128-thousand poor villages. So we sent groups of public servants -- from public servants at the county level, to the staffs of state-owned enterprises and institutions, to those villages to help them make plans, to emancipate their minds, and to think about ways out of poverty. Each village has three to five people at each layer. They all take public salaries.

Over the past few years, more than 2.8 million people and cadres have worked in the villages, including 800-thousand locals. That's how we get results. Not only have the numbers of poor villages and people been reduced, our poverty alleviation work also has promoted infrastructure and the capabilities of poor areas, and especially the democratic consciousness of the villages. So as General Secretary Xi Jinping said, targeted poverty alleviation should be a prerequisite of development within poor areas. This is based on reality. Poverty alleviation should not only overall deepen reform within villages, but also in the cities of China."