Time to think of combating poverty after 2020

Clad in worn-out clothes, his hair covered with frost and his face blue with cold, a boy stands before his classmates who are making fun of his "white hat". He is a picture of embarrassment.

The photograph taken by a teacher on Monday morning at a rural primary school in Zhaotong, Southwest China's Yunnan province, has pained many of those who have seen it on the internet.

As the 2020 deadline for eliminating abject poverty from rural areas draws close, the problems exposed by the photo and the story behind it should prompt the authorities to plan poverty alleviation measures beyond 2020.