'Arduous tasks' lie ahead in poverty fight

Xi warned that officials should neither cheat in their evaluation of poverty reduction work nor make unrealistic promises to poor people.

According to the president, the criteria of poverty reduction is to see that the basic living needs of rural poor populations are met and that such people have access to compulsory education, basic medical services and housing.

Last year, Xi was elected as an NPC deputy by the People's Congress of the Inner Mongolia autonomous region, a less-developed area of the country. He explained that his participation in the election in Inner Mongolia reflected the Party's determination to fight poverty.

China has set the goal of lifting all the country's rural impoverished people out of poverty by 2020, which will be the first time in thousands of years of Chinese history that extreme poverty will have been eliminated.

According to China's plan, roughly 10 million could be lifted out of poverty each year. Last year, a total of 13.86 million rural poor people were lifted out of poverty, including 2.8 million people relocated from inhospitable areas.