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Zhejiang, one of China's richest provinces, has said good-bye to its poor towns, Zhang Mengjin, deputy governor of Zhejiang told a meeting on rural development held recently in the provincial capital Hangzhou.

The last 100 poorest towns in the east China province had swapped poverty for affluence in 2002, with the average annual income of farmers rising from 1,200 yuan (145 US dollars) in 1997-1999 to 1,922 yuan (232.4 US dollars), said Zhang.

With half its 47 million people being farmers, Zhejiang has had the highest average net income for farmers among all China's provinces and regions in the past decade. In 1998, the final eight poor counties in Zhejiang left poverty behind and the province became the first in China with no counties below the official poverty line.

However, the province still had 100 towns which included 600,000 farmers in mountainous areas or islands living in poverty.

To help those farmers, Zhejiang launched a poverty-alleviation project in 2000 to provide special support to the 100 towns.

Under its financial transfer policy, the provincial government has distributed 280 million yuan (33.9 million US dollars) to the poor towns over the past three years. Some 145 provincial departments and developed counties or cities in Zhejiang also collected 156 million yuan (18.9 million US dollars) for the poor towns.

Thanks to the government's financial help, the building of infrastructure facilities in the poor areas greatly improved, including transport, water conservation, power network, and telecommunications.

Now almost all the villages have highways completed. Electricity, telephones and cable television are also available in all the villages, owing to the financial transfer policy.

Zhejiang reformed its methods of helping the poor and under a migration policy moved poor farmers from their adverse environments to central towns.

The government offered favorable policies to encourage businesses to employ those farmers, to ensure they lived stable and better off lives after the shift.

Altogether about 53,800 farmers from the 100 towns have left their mountain areas and poverty behind in the past three years.

Liao Chunfei, a farmer in Wuyi County, lived in hill country over 500 meters high above sea level. His family was very poor and the four family members had to sleep in the same bed.

Since moving to town, he and his brother have worked in the construction business. The two brothers have earned several hundred thousand yuan (tens of thousands of US dollars) and their life has became comfortably off.

"I was worried whether there was a woman willing to marry a poor guy like me," said Liao, who now lives happily with his wife.

The Zhejiang government has also organized farmers to work in developed areas. In the past three years, about 280,000 farmers have gone to work all over the country, earning over 1,000 million yuan (120.9 million US dollars) every year.

Those towns with better transport and natural conditions are encouraged to develop specialized agriculture. Statistics show that the 100 poor towns have set up 535 agricultural programs and bases for special produce cover over 870 thousand mu (58 ha).

The annual average income of the farmers in the 100 towns has increased by 32.6 percent compared with three years ago.

Statistics show that China's poor population has dropped from 250 million in 1979 to currently 30 million and the percentage of poor people has declined from 30.7 percent to 3 percent in rural areas.