2025 Transition Ends; 2026 Starts Normalized Assistance with RMB177 Billion

As of the end of 2025, the five-year transition period for consolidating poverty alleviation achievements and linking them with rural revitalization was successfully completed. After five years of sustained efforts, development foundations in formerly impoverished areas have become more solid, and the endogenous development momentum of formerly impoverished people has notably strengthened. 2026 marks the first year of the 15th Five-Year Plan and the first year of normalized assistance. Relevant departments, while keeping policies broadly stable, have made appropriate adjustments and optimizations, and have basically established a normalized assistance policy system covering monitoring and assistance, use of assistance funds, and industrial and employment support.

In terms of actual results, normalized assistance has got off to a steady start. As of the end of June 2026, the employment scale of formerly impoverished laborers exceeded 32 million, and the per capita disposable income growth of rural residents in formerly impoverished counties continued to outpace the national rural average.

At present, the total output value of leading assistance industries nationwide has exceeded RMB2 trillion, and nearly three-quarters of the formerly impoverished population have established benefit-linking mechanisms with new-type agricultural business entities. On employment assistance, through measures such as east-west labor cooperation, cross-provincial transport subsidies, and cultivation of distinctive labor brands, more than 13 million people have found employment outside their home provinces; through channels such as rural public welfare posts, assistance workshops, and work-for-relief programs, more than 19 million people have found employment within their provinces.

The monitoring and assistance mechanism has been continuously improved. Localities use methods such as self-declaration by rural households, big-data early warnings from government departments, and routine grassroots inspections to promptly identify people at risk of falling back into poverty, and implement targeted assistance measures according to individual and household circumstances. In the western region, 160 national key counties for rural revitalization assistance have been designated, and in the central and western regions, 390 provincial-level key counties have been designated, with concentrated resources supporting a batch of projects to shore up weaknesses, promote development, and benefit people's livelihoods.

Going forward, the monitoring scope will be gradually expanded to cover the entire rural population, monitoring methods will be optimized, and grassroots cadres will serve as frontline sentinels to quickly identify people at risk of falling back into poverty and provide targeted assistance. Employment assistance will focus on two key groups - older laborers and newly emerging laborers - while leveraging work-for-relief programs and assistance workshops and stabilizing rural public welfare posts. At the same time, the 'dual support for aspiration and intellect' initiative will be carried out on a regular basis to stimulate the endogenous motivation of assistance recipients and strengthen support for key regions. In managing the formerly impoverished population, those who would face poverty-return risk if assistance policies were withdrawn will continue to receive support; development-oriented assistance measures will be intensified, a project to develop the entire assistance industry chain and increase farmers' income will be promoted, and the role of industry in linking and benefiting farmers will be sustained.