(Text: Hannah Mak)

HONG KONG, March 12, 2016 - Shareen Ahmed Farhad, Howard Liu, Lanying Zhang and Yuen Chan discussed how China can eliminate poverty in rural places. The central government plans to lift 10 million people out of poverty annually by 2020. Migrant workers, left-behind children and the elderly in rural areas are the key factors of addressing inequality between the urban and the rural. How the government implement its laws and policies effectively is also crucial in eradicating rural poverty. They emphasized that non-governmental organizations in China especially glass-root organizations play an important role as well for capacity building as they can complement the state government and work with the local population by understanding their specific needs in order to make real progress and changes in society.