No black mark for officials when poverty a choice

Editor's Note: A short video clip showing a grassroots civil servant in charge of the local poverty alleviation work addressing a group of poverty-stricken villagers in Zhenyuan county of Yunnan province, went viral on the internet, as she admonishes her listeners not to pin all their hopes on government subsidies for improving their lives. China Daily writer Li Yang comments:

If the speaker, as many other grassroots civil servants in her shoes have done, had comforted the poor villagers by reaffirming the government's resolve to lift them out of poverty by the end of next year - when China vows to build a moderately well-off society nationwide - the video clip would not have stirred a heated discussion.

To fulfill the compulsory goal set by the central authority of eliminating abject rural poverty by 2020, civil servants working in some impoverished areas, where the natural and living environments are invariably harsh, have left no stones unturned to help improve local residents' livelihoods.