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BEIJING, March 6-- Only 300 days are left for China to eradicate absolute poverty as promised, and the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) is posing more challenges to reach the goal. With such daunting difficulties ahead, a symposium on securing a decisive victory in poverty alleviation held on Friday demonstrated that China is resolved and confident in completing the world's biggest poverty-relief project. The Chinese government has decided to lift all rural residents living below the current poverty line out of poverty by 2020. For seven consecutive years, China had lifted more than 10 million people out of poverty annually. By the end of 2019, 5.51 million people were still living in poverty, but none of them will be left behind on the nation's way to become a moderately prosperous society in all respects. Friday's symposium showed that the top leadership is fully aware of the difficulties in the final push, including the impact of the COVID-19 outbreak, industrial weakness and undesirable working styles of bureaucratism and practices of formalities for formalities' sake as exposed in some places. It is based on the precise identification of these real problems that the government takes effective countermeasures to ensure substantive and sustainable outcomes. As mapped out at the symposium, China will focus more on the poorest regions, prevent the risk of some people returning to poverty, promote industrial development, create more job opportunities and strengthen evaluation and oversight over poverty alleviation efforts. | 
